Chapter IV: Roman Germany and the Free Germans (2)

The very extent and general diffusion of these misdeeds rendered a corresponding chastisement impossible. It deserves to be acknowledged that the new ruler, who happily had remained in person aloof from all these occurrences, in a genuine statesmanly fashion allowed the past to be past, and exerted himself only to prevent the repetition of similar scenes. That the prominent culprits, whether from the ranks of the troops or from the insurgents, were brought to account for their crimes, was a matter of course; we may measure the punishment by the fact that when five years afterwards one of the Gallic insurgent leaders was discovered in a lurking-place, in which his wife had up to that time kept him concealed, Vespasian gave him as well as her over to the executioner. But the renegade legions were allowed to share in the fighting against the Germans, and to atone for their guilt to some extent in the hot conflicts at Treves and at Vetera. It is true, nevertheless, that the four legions of the lower Rhenish army were all dismissed, as was one of the two upper Rhenish legions that took part--one would gladly believe that the 22d was spared in honourable remembrance of its brave legate. Probably a considerable number of the Batavian cohorts met with the same fate, and not less, apparently, the cavalry regiment of the Treveri, and perhaps several other specially prominent troops. Still less than against the rebellious soldiers could proceedings be taken with the full severity of the law against the insurgent Celtic and German cantons; that the Roman legions demanded the razing of the Treverian colony of Augustus--this time for the sake not of booty but of vengeance--is at least as intelligible as the destruction, desired by the Germans, of the town of the Ubii; but as Civilis protected the one so Vespasian protected the other. Even the Germans on the left of the Rhine had, on the whole, their previous position left to them. But probably--we are here without certain tradition--there was introduced in the levy and the employment of the _auxilia_ an essential change, which diminished the danger involved in the auxiliary system. The Batavi retained freedom from taxation and a still privileged position as regards service; a part of them, not altogether inconsiderable, had withal championed in arms the cause of the Romans. But the Batavian troops were considerably diminished, and, while hitherto--as it would appear of right--officers had been placed over them from their own nobility, and the same had been at least frequently done as respects the other Germanic and Celtic troops, the officers of the _alae_ and _cohortes_ were afterwards taken predominantly from the class from which Vespasian himself was descended--from the good urban middle class of Italy and of the provincial towns organised after the Italian fashion. Officers of the position of the Cheruscan Arminius, of the Batavian Civilis, of the Treverian Classicus do not henceforth recur. As little is the previous close association of troops levied from the same canton met with subsequently; on the contrary, the men serve, without distinction as to their descent, in the most various divisions; this was probably a lesson which the Roman military administration gathered from this war. It was another change, probably suggested by this war, that while hitherto the majority of the auxiliaries employed in Germany were taken from the Germanic and neighbouring cantons, thenceforth the Germanic auxiliary troops found preponderantly employment outside of their native country, just like the Dalmatian and Pannonian troops in consequence of the war with Bato. Vespasian was a soldier of sagacity and experience; it is probably in good part a merit of his if we meet with no later example of revolt of the _auxilia_ against their legions.

[Sidenote: Later attitude of the Roman Germans on the lower Rhine.]

That the insurrection, which we have just narrated, of the Germans on the left of the Rhine--although it, in consequence of the accidental completeness of the accounts preserved respecting it, alone gives us a clear insight into the political and military relations on the lower Rhine and in Gaul generally, and therefore deserved to be narrated in more detail--was yet called forth more by outward and accidental causes than by the inner necessity of things, is proved by the apparently complete quiet which now ensued there, and by the--so far as we can see--uninterrupted _status quo_ in this very region. The Roman Germans were merged in the empire no less completely than the Roman Gauls; of attempts at insurrection on the part of the former there is no further mention. At the close of the third century, the Franks invading Gaul by way of the lower Rhine included in their seizure the Batavian territory; yet the Batavians maintained themselves in their old though diminished settlements, as did likewise the Frisians, even during the confusions of the great migration of peoples, and, so far as we know, preserved allegiance even to the decaying empire.

[Sidenote: The free Germans on the lower Rhine.]

When we turn from the Romanised to the free Germans to the east of the Rhine, we find offensive action on their part not less brought to an end with their participation in that Batavian insurrection, than the attempts of the Romans to bring about an alteration of the frontier on a grand scale in those regions came to a close with the expeditions of Germanicus.

[Sidenote: Bructeri.]

Of the free Germans, those dwelling next to the Roman territory were the Bructeri on both banks of the middle Ems, and in the region of the sources of the Ems and Lippe; for which reason they took part before all the other Germans in the Batavian insurrection. To their canton belonged the maiden Veleda, who sent forth her countrymen to the war against Rome and promised them the victory, whose utterance decided the fate of the town of the Ubii, and to whose high tower the captive senators and the captured admiral's ship of the Rhenish fleet were sent. The overthrow of the Batavi affected them also; and perhaps, in addition, a special counterblow of the Romans since that virgin was subsequently led as a captive to Rome. This disaster, as well as feuds with the neighbouring tribes, broke their power; under Nero a king whom they did not wish was obtruded on them by force of arms on the part of their neighbours with the passive assistance of the Roman legate.

[Sidenote: Cherusci.]

[Sidenote: Langobardi.]

[Sidenote: Semnones.]

The Cherusci, in the region of the upper Weser, in the time of Augustus and Tiberius the leading canton in central Germany, is seldom mentioned after the death of Arminius, but always as sustaining good relations to the Romans. When the civil war, which must have continued to rage among them even after the fall of Arminius, had swept away the whole family of their princes, they requested from the Roman government the last of that house, Italicus, a brother's son of Arminius living in Italy, to be their ruler; it is true that the return home of one who was brave but answered more to his name than to his lineage, kindled the feud afresh, and, when he was driven off by his own people, the Langobardi placed him once more on the tottering throne. One of his successors, king Chariomerus, so earnestly took the side of the Romans in Domitian's war with the Chatti, that he after its close, when driven away by the Chatti, fled to the Romans and invoked--although vainly--their intervention. Through those perpetual inward and outward feuds the Cheruscan people was so weakened that it henceforth disappears from active politics. The name of the Marsi is no longer met with at all after the expeditions of Germanicus. That the tribes dwelling farther to the east on the Elbe as well as all the more remote Germans took as little part in the struggles of the Batavians and their allies in the years 69 and 70, as these took in the German wars under Augustus and Tiberius may, considering the detailed character of the narrative, be described as certain. Where they meet us subsequently they never appear in a hostile attitude to the Romans. That the Langobardi reinstated the Roman king of the Cherusci, has already been mentioned. Masuus, the king of the Semnones, and--what is remarkable--along with him the prophetess Ganna, who was held in high repute among this tribe famous for its special credulity, visited the emperor Domitian in Rome, and met with a friendly reception at his court. In the regions from the Weser to the Elbe during these centuries various feuds may have raged, the balance of power may in various cases have shifted, various cantons may have changed their name or joined another combination; as regards their relations to the Romans a permanent frontier-peace set in, after it came to be generally felt that these had positively abandoned the subjugation of this region. Even invasions from the far East cannot have materially disturbed it at this epoch; for they could not but have reacted on the Roman guarding of the frontier, and we should not have lacked information had more serious crises occurred in this domain. All this is confirmed by the reduction of the army of the lower Rhine to half of its former amount, which occurred we know not exactly when, but within this epoch. The army of the lower Rhine, with which Vespasian had to fight, numbered four legions; that of the time of Trajan presumably the same number, at least three;[71] probably already under Hadrian, certainly under Marcus, there were not more than two--the 1st Minervian and the 30th of Trajan--stationed there.

[Sidenote: Upper Germany.]

Germanic affairs in the upper province developed themselves after another fashion. Of the Germans on the left of the Rhine who belonged to this province, the Triboci, Nemetes, Vangiones, there is nothing historically worth mentioning, except that they, for long settled among the Celts, shared the destinies of Gaul. Here too the Rhine always remained the chief line of defence for the Romans. All the standing camps of the legions were at all times on the left bank of the Rhine; not even that of Argentoratum was transferred to the right bank, when the whole region of the Neckar was Roman. But while in the lower province the Roman rule on the right bank of the Rhine was restricted in course of time, here on the other hand it was extended. The project of Augustus to connect the camps on the Rhine with those on the Danube by advancing the imperial frontier in an eastward direction--which, if it had been carried out, would have enlarged upper more than lower Germany--was perhaps never completely abandoned in this command, and was resumed subsequently, though on a more modest scale. Historical tradition does not give us the means of presenting a connected view of the operations continued with this object for centuries, the construction of roads and walls pertaining thereto, and the wars waged on this account; and even the great military structure still existing, whose rise and progress--likewise embracing centuries--must include in itself a good part of that history, has hitherto not been investigated throughout, as it well might be, by the eyes of military experts. The hope that unified Germany would combine for the investigation of this its oldest historical monument, has not been fulfilled. We shall here attempt to put together what has hitherto been brought to light on the subject from the fragments of the Roman annals or of the Roman strongholds.

[Sidenote: Mogontiacum.]

[Sidenote: Mattiaci.]

On the right bank, not far from the northern end of the province, there stretches in front of the level or hilly country of the lower Rhine, in a direction from west to east, the range of the Taunus, which abuts on the Rhine opposite to Bingen. Parallel to this mountain-range, shut off on the other side by the spurs of the Odenwald, stretches the plain of the lower Main-valley, the true access to the interior of Germany, dominated by the key of the position at the point where the Main falls into the Rhine, Mogontiacum or Mentz, from the time of Drusus down to the end of Rome the stronghold out of which the Romans sallied to attack Germany from Gaul,[72] as it is at the present day the true barrier of Germany against France. Here the Romans, even after they had abandoned their rule in the region of the upper Rhine generally, retained not merely the _tête-de-pont_ on the other bank, the _castellum Mogontiacense_ (Castel), but also that plain of the Main itself in their possession; and in this region a Roman civilisation might establish itself. This land originally belonged to the Chatti, and a Chattan tribe, the Mattiaci, remained settled here even under Roman rule; but, after the Chatti were compelled to cede this district to Drusus, it remained a part of the empire. The hot springs in the immediate neighbourhood of Mentz (aquae Mattiacae, Wiesbaden) were used by the Romans demonstrably in Vespasian's time, and doubtless long before: silver was worked here under Claudius; the Mattiaci already furnished troops to the army at an early date like other subject districts. They took part in the general rising of the Germans under Civilis; but, after they were vanquished, the earlier relations were re-established. From the end of the second century we find the community of the Taunensian Mattiaci under authorities organised after the Roman model.[73]

[Sidenote: Chatti.]

The Chatti, although thus driven away from the Rhine, appear in the sequel as the most powerful among the tribes of inland Germany who came into contact with the Romans; the lead which, under Augustus and Tiberius, had been possessed by the Cherusci on the middle Weser, passed, amidst the constant feuds with these their southern cognate neighbours, over to the latter. All the wars between Romans and Germans, of which we have any knowledge from the time after the death of Arminius down to the time when the migrations of the peoples began at the end of the third century, were waged against the Chatti; as in the year 41 under Claudius by Galba, who became afterwards emperor; and in the year 50 under the same emperor by Publius Pomponius Secundus, celebrated as a poet. These were the usual border incursions, and the Chatti had taken a part, but only a secondary one, in the great Batavian war (p. 133). But in the campaign which the Emperor Domitian undertook in the year 83 the Romans were the aggressors; and this war led, not indeed to brilliant victories, but doubtless to a considerable and momentous pushing forward of the Roman frontier.[74] At that time the frontier-line was arranged, as we find it thenceforth drawn; and within that line, which in its most northern portion was not far removed from the Rhine, must have been included a great part of the Taunus and the region of the Main as far as above Friedberg. The Usipes, who, after their already-mentioned expulsion from the region of the Lippe, appear about the time of Vespasian in the neighbourhood of Mentz, and may have found new settlements to the east of the Mattiaci on the Kinzig or in the Fuldan district, were then annexed to the empire, and, at the same time with them, a number of smaller tribes thrown off by the Chatti. Thereupon, when in the year 88, under the governor Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the upper German army rose against Domitian, the war was on the point of renewal; the revolted troops made common cause with the Chatti;[75] and it was only the interruption of the communications, when the ice broke up on the Rhine, that made it possible for the regiments which had remained faithful to settle matters with the revolters before the dangerous contingent arrived. It is stated that the Roman rule extended from Mentz towards the interior 80 _leugae_, and thus even beyond Fulda;[76] and this account appears worthy of credit, if we take into consideration that the military frontier-line, which certainly seems not to have gone far above Friedberg, doubtless kept here also within the territorial boundary.

[Sidenote: The region of the Neckar.]

But not merely was the valley of the lower Main in front of Mentz brought within the military frontier-line; in south-western Germany also the boundary was pushed forward in a still greater degree. The region of the Neckar, once possessed by the Celtic Helvetii, then for long a debateable borderland between these and the advancing Germans, and therefore named the Helvetian desert, subsequently perhaps occupied partially by the Marcomani, before these retreated to Bohemia (p. 29), came on the regulation of the Germanic boundaries after the battle of Varus into the same position as the greater portion of the right bank of the lower Rhine. Here, too, there must have been a frontier-line already at that time marked off, within which Germanic settlements were not tolerated. Thereupon individual, mostly Gallic, immigrants, who had not much to lose, settled down, as on an unenclosed moor, in these fertile but little protected regions, which went at that time by the name of _agri decumates_.[77] This private occupation, which was, it may be conjectured, merely tolerated by the government, was followed by the formal taking possession of it probably under Vespasian. As already, about the year 74, a highway was carried from Strassburg on the right bank of the Rhine as far as Offenburg,[78] there must have been instituted about this time in this region a more earnest protection of the frontier than the mere prohibition of Germanic settlement furnished. What the father had begun the sons carried out. Perhaps even through the construction--whether by Vespasian, by Titus, or Domitian--of the "Flavian altars"[79] at the source of the Neckar, near the modern Rottweil--a settlement of which indeed we know nothing but the name--there was procured for the new upper Germany on the right of the Rhine a centre similar to what the Ubian altar was formerly intended to become for Great Germany, and soon afterwards the altar of Sarmizegetusa became for the newly-conquered Dacia. The first institution of the frontier-defence, to be described further on, by which the Neckar valley was brought within the Roman line, is thus the work of the Flavii, chiefly, doubtless, of Domitian,[80] who thereby carried further the construction at the Taunus. The military road on the right of the Rhine from Mogontiacum by way of Heidelberg and Baden in the direction of Offenburg--the necessary consequence of this annexation of the Neckar region--was, as we now know,[81] constructed by Trajan in the year 100, and was a part of the more direct communication established by that emperor between Gaul and the line of the Danube. There was employment for the soldiers at these works, but hardly for their arms; there were no Germanic tribes dwelling in the region of the Neckar, and still less can the narrow strip on the left bank of the Danube, which was thereby brought within the frontier line, have cost serious struggles. The nearest Germanic people of note there, the Hermunduri, had more friendly dispositions towards the Romans than any other tribe had, and carried on lively commercial intercourse with them in the town of the Vindelici, Augusta; of the fact that this advance met with no resistance from them, we shall find traces further on. Under the following reigns of Hadrian, Pius, and Marcus, further progress was made with these military arrangements.

[Sidenote: The upper Germanic Limes.]

We cannot historically follow out the mode in which the frontier-fence between the Rhine and the Danube--still in great part subsisting as regards its foundations at the present day--came into existence, but we are able to recognise not merely the course which it took but also the purpose which it served. The work was as to its nature and purpose different in upper Germany from what it was in Raetia. The upper German frontier-fence, with a length in all of about 250 Roman miles (228 English miles[82]) begins immediately at the northern boundary of the province, embraces, as has been already said, the Taunus and the plain of the Main as far as the district of Friedberg, and turns thence southward to the Main, which it meets at Grosskrotzenburg above Hanau. Following the Main thence as far as Wörth, it here takes the direction of the Neckar, which it reaches somewhat below Wimpfen and does not again leave. Afterwards in front of the southern half of this frontier-line a second was laid out, which follows the Main by way of Wörth as far as Miltenberg, and thence is led for the most part in a straight direction to Lorch between Stuttgart and Aalen. Here to the upper German frontier-fence is joined on the Raetian, only 120 miles (108 English) long; it leaves the Danube at Kelheim above Ratisbon and runs thence, twice crossing the Altmuhl, in a curve westward likewise as far as Lorch.

The upper Germanic Limes consists of a series of forts which are distant from each other, at the most, half a day's march (about nine English miles). Where the lines of connection between the forts are not closed by the Main or the Neckar, as stated above, there was introduced an artificial barrier, at first perhaps merely by a palisade,[83] afterwards by a continuous earthen rampart of moderate height, with a fosse outside and watch-towers built in at short intervals on the inner side.[84] The forts are not introduced into the rampart, but constructed immediately behind it at a distance seldom exceeding one-third of an English mile.

[Sidenote: The Raetian Limes.]

The Raetian frontier-fence was a mere barrier, produced by piling up quarry-stones; there were no fosses or watch-towers, and the forts, constructed behind the Limes without regular succession and at unequal intervals (none nearer than two and a half to three miles), stand in no immediate connection with the barrier-line. As to the order in time of the constructions there is no definite testimony; it is proved that the upper Germanic line of the Neckar was in existence under Pius,[85] that placed in front of it from Miltenberg to Lorch under Marcus.[86] The idea of a frontier-bar was common to the two structures, otherwise so different; the preference in the one case for the piling up of earth--whence the fosse for the most part resulted of itself--in the other case, for layers of stone, probably depended only on the diversity of the soil and of the materials for building. It was common to them, further, that neither the one nor the other was constructed for the defence, as a whole, of the frontier. Not merely was the hindrance, which the piling up of earth or stone presented to the assailant, slight in itself; but along the line we meet everywhere with commanding positions, morasses lying in the rear, a want of outlook towards the country in front, and similar clear indications of the fact, that in the tracing of it warlike purposes generally were not contemplated. The forts are of course arranged for defence, each by itself, but they are not connected by paved cross-roads; and so the individual garrison relied for support not on those of the neighbouring forts, but on the rear-base, to which the road led, whereby each was kept garrisoned. Moreover, these garrisons were not dovetailed into a military system of frontier defence; they were rather fortified positions for a case of need than strategically chosen for the occupation of the territory, as indeed the very extent of the line itself, compared with the number of troops at disposal, excludes the possibility of its defence as a whole.[87]

[Sidenote: Object of these structures.]

Thus these extensive military structures had not, like the Britannic wall, the object of checking the invasion of the enemy. The intention rather was, that, like the bridges over the river-frontier, so the roads on the land-frontier should be commanded by the forts, but in other respects, like the river as the water-boundary, so the wall on the landward should hinder the uncontrolled crossing of the frontier. Other uses might be combined with this; the preference, often apparent, for the rectilineal direction points to its application for signals, and occasionally the structure may have been used directly for purposes of war. But the proper and immediate object of the structure was to prevent the crossing of the frontier. The fact, withal, that watch-posts and forts were erected, not on the Raetian but on the upper Germanic frontier, is explained by their different relations to the neighbours, in the former case to the Hermunduri, in the latter to the Chatti. The Romans in upper Germany did not confront their neighbours as they confronted the Highlanders of Britain, in whose presence the province was always in a state of siege; but the repulse of predatory invaders as well as the levying of the frontier-dues demanded at any rate ready and near military help. The upper German army, and in keeping with it the garrisons on the Limes, might be gradually reduced, but the Roman _pilum_ could never be dispensed with in the land of the Neckar. It might, however, be dispensed with in presence of the Hermunduri, who, in Trajan's time, alone of all the Germans, were at liberty to cross the frontier of the empire without special control and to trade freely in the Roman territory, especially in Augsburg, and with whom, so far as we know, border-collisions never took place. There was thus at this period no occasion for a similar structure on the Raetian frontier; the forts north of the Danube, which can be shown to have subsisted already in Trajan's time,[88] sufficed here for the protection of the frontier and the control of frontier-intercourse. This accords with the observation that the Raetian Limes, as it stands before our eyes, corresponds only with the more recent upper Germanic barrier-line perhaps laid out for the first time under Marcus. Then occasion for it was not wanting. The wars of the Chatti, as we shall see (p. 161), seized at this time also on Raetia; the strengthening too of the garrison of the province might reasonably stand in connection with the erection of this Limes, which, however little it was arranged for military ends, was at any rate doubtless constructed with a view to its being a frontier-bar, though of less strong character.[89]

[Sidenote: Their effect.]

In a military as well as a political sense the shifting of the frontier, or rather the strengthening of the frontier-fence, was effective and useful. While formerly the Roman chain of forts in upper Germany and Raetia probably went up the Rhine by way of Strassburg to Basel and along by Vindonissa to the lake of Constance, then from thence to the upper Danube, now the upper German headquarters were in Mentz and the Raetian in Ratisbon, and generally the two chief armies of the empire were brought considerably nearer to each other. The legionary camp of Vindonissa (Windisch near Zürich) became thereby superfluous. The army of the upper Rhine could, like the neighbouring one, be reduced after some time to the half of its former strength. The original number of four legions, which was only accidentally diminished to three during the Batavian war, subsisted, at all events, probably still under Trajan;[90] but under Marcus the province was only occupied by two legions, the 8th and the 22d, of which the former was stationed at Strassburg, the second at the headquarters Mentz, while most of the troops, broken up into smaller posts, were stationed along the frontier-wall. Within the new line urban life flourished almost as on the left bank of the Rhine; Sumelocenna (Rottenburg on the Neckar), Aquae (_civitas Aurelia Aquensis_, Baden), Lopodunum (Ladenburg), had, if we except Cologne and Treves, to fear no comparison as respects Roman urban development with any town of Belgica. The rise of these settlements was chiefly the work of Trajan, who began his government with this act of peace;[91] "the Rhine Roman on both its banks" is what a Roman poet entreats speedily to send to Rome its yet unseen ruler. The great and fertile region, which was placed in this way under the protection of the legions, needed that protection and was worthy of it. Doubtless the battle of Varus marks the beginning of the ebb of Roman power, but only in so far as its advance was thereby ended, and the Romans thenceforth contented themselves in general with shielding more vigorously and continuously what was retained.

[Sidenote: Germany under Marcus.]

Down to the beginning of the third century the Roman power on the Rhine showed no indications of tottering. During the war with the Marcomani under Marcus all remained quiet in the lower province. If a legate of Belgica had at that time to call out the general levy against the Chauci, this was presumably a piratical expedition, such as often visited the north coast at this time, just as earlier and later. The surge of the great movement of peoples reached to the sources of the Danube and even as far as the region of the Rhine; but it did not shake the foundations there. The Chatti, the only considerable Germanic tribe on the upper German and Raetian border-fence, pushed forward in both directions, and were probably at that time even among the Germans invading Italy, as will be shown further on when we describe this war. At any rate the reinforcement of the Raetian army at that time ordained by Marcus, and its conversion into a command of the first class with legion and legates, can only have taken place in order to check the attacks of the Chatti, and proves that they did not treat them lightly as regards the future. The already-mentioned strengthening of the border-defence would likewise stand connected with this movement. These measures must have sufficed for the next generation.

[Sidenote: War with the Alamanni.]

[Sidenote: Severus Antoninus.]

[Sidenote: Alexander.]

Under Antoninus the son of Severus a new and more severe war once more (213) broke out in Raetia. This also was waged against the Chatti; but by their side a second people is named, which we here meet for the first time--the Alamanni. Whence they came, we know not. According to a Roman writing a little later they were a conflux of mixed elements; the appellation also seems to point to a league of communities, as well as the fact that afterwards the different tribes comprehended under this name stand forth--more than is the case among the other great Germanic peoples--in their separate character, and the Juthungi, the Lentienses, and other Alamannic peoples not seldom act independently. But that it is not the Germans of this region who here emerge allied under the new name and strengthened by the alliance, is shown as well by the naming of the Alamanni alongside of the Chatti, as by the mention of the unwonted skilfulness of the Alamanni in equestrian combat. On the contrary it was certainly, in the main, hordes coming on from the East that lent new strength to the almost extinguished German resistance on the Rhine; it is not improbable that the powerful Semnones, in earlier times dwelling on the middle Elbe, of whom there is no further mention after the end of the second century, furnished a strong contingent to the Alamanni. The constantly increasing misgovernment in the Roman empire naturally contributed its share, although only in a secondary degree, to the shifting of power. The emperor took the field in person against the new foe; in August of the year 213 he crossed the Roman frontier, and a victory over them on the Main was achieved or at least celebrated; further forts were constructed; the tribes of the Elbe and of the North Sea sent deputies to the Roman ruler, and wondered when in receiving them he wore their own dress, with silver-mounted jacket, and hair and beard coloured and arranged after the German fashion. But thenceforth the wars on the Rhine are incessant, and the aggressors are the Germans; the neighbours formerly so pliant had as it were exchanged characters. Twenty years later the inroads of the barbarians on the Danube as on the Rhine were so constant and so serious, that the emperor Alexander had on their account to break off the less immediately dangerous Persian war and to resort in person to the camp of Mentz, not so much to defend the territory as to purchase peace from the Germans by large sums of money. The exasperation of the soldiers at this led to his murder (A.D. 235), and thereby to the fall of the Severian dynasty, the last that existed at all until the regeneration of the state.

[Sidenote: Maximinus.]

[Sidenote: The Franks.]

His successor Maximinus, a rough but brave Thracian who had risen from the position of a common soldier, compensated for the cowardly conduct of his predecessor by an energetic expedition into the heart of Germany. The barbarians did not yet venture to face a strong and well-led Roman army; they retreated to their forests and morasses, and the brave emperor, following them even thither, fought in front of all hand to hand. From these conflicts, which were doubtless directed from Mentz primarily against the Alamanni, he could with right call himself Germanicus; and even for the future the expedition of the year 236, for long the last great victory which the Romans gained on the Rhine, bore some fruit. Although the constant and bloody changes on the throne and the grave disasters in the East and on the Danube allowed the Romans no time to breathe, during the next twenty years, if peace was not strictly preserved on the Rhine a greater disaster did not occur. It appears even that one of the upper German legions was at that time sent to Africa without its place being supplied, and so upper Germany was held as tolerably secure. But when in the year 253 the different generals of Rome were once more fighting each other for the imperial dignity, and the Rhine-legions marched to Italy to fight out the cause of their emperor Valerianus against the Aemilianus of the Danube-army, this seems to have been the signal[92] for the Germans pushing forward especially towards the lower Rhine.[93] These Germans were the Franks, who appear here for the first time, perhaps new opponents only in name; for, although the identification of them, already to be met with in later antiquity, with tribes formerly named on the lower Rhine--partly, the Chamavi settled beside the Bructeri, partly the Sugambri formerly mentioned subject to the Romans--is uncertain and at least inadequate, there is here greater probability than in the case of the Alamanni that the Germans hitherto dependent on Rome on the right bank of the Rhine, and the Germanic tribes previously dislodged from the Rhine, took at that time--under the collective name of the "Free"--the offensive in concert against the Romans.

[Sidenote: Gallienus.]

[Sidenote: Postumus.]

So long as Gallienus himself remained on the Rhine, he, notwithstanding the small forces that were at his disposal, kept his opponents to some extent in check, prevented them from crossing the river, or drove out again the intruders, although he doubtless ceded to one of the Germanic leaders a portion of the desired territory on the river-bank, under the condition of his acknowledging the Roman rule and defending his possession against his countrymen--which indeed almost amounted to a capitulation. But when the emperor, recalled by the still more dangerous position of affairs on the Danube, resorted thither and left behind as representative in Gaul his elder son still in boyhood, one of the officers, to whom he had intrusted the defence of the frontier and the guardianship of his son, Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus,[94] got himself proclaimed by his men as emperor and besieged in Cologne Silvanus the guardian of the emperor's son. He was successful in capturing the town and in getting into his power his former colleague as well as the imperial boy, whereupon he had them both executed. But during this confusion the Franks burst over the Rhine, and not merely overflowed all Gaul, but penetrated also into Spain and indeed pillaged even the coast of Africa. Soon afterwards, when the capture of Valerian by the Persians had filled up the measure of misfortune, all the Roman land on the left bank of the Rhine in the upper province was lost, passing doubtless to the Alamanni, whose eruption into Italy in the last years of Gallienus necessarily presupposes this loss. He is the last emperor whose name is found on monuments on the right of the Rhine. His coins celebrate him on account of five great victories over the Germans, and not less are those of his successor in the Gallic rule, Postumus, full of the praise of the German victories of the deliverer of Gaul. Gallienus in his earlier years had taken up the struggle on the Rhine not without energy, and Postumus was even an excellent officer and would gladly have been a good regent; but amidst the utter unruliness which then prevailed in the Roman state or rather in the Roman army, the talent and ability of the individual profited neither himself nor the commonwealth. A series of flourishing Roman towns was at that time laid desolate by the invading barbarians, and the right bank of the Rhine was for ever lost to the Romans.

[Sidenote: Aurelianus.]

The re-establishment of peace and order in Gaul was primarily dependent on the cohesion of the empire generally; so long as the Italian emperors stationed their troops in the Narbonensis to set aside the Gallic rival, and the latter in turn made as though he would cross the Alps, effective operations against the Germans were of themselves excluded. It was only after that, about the year 272,[95] the then ruler of Gaul, Tetricus, weary of his ungrateful part, had himself brought about the submission of his troops to Aurelianus, the emperor recognised by the Roman senate, that the thought of warding off the Germans could be again entertained. The raids of the Alamanni, who had for almost ten years ravaged upper Italy as far down as Ravenna, had a stop put to them for long by the same able ruler who had brought Gaul back to the empire, and he emphatically defeated one of their tribes, the Juthungi, on the upper Danube. If his government had lasted he would doubtless have renewed the protection of the frontier also in Gaul; after his speedy and sudden end (275) the Germans once more crossed the Rhine and devastated the country far and wide.

[Sidenote: Probus.]

His successor Probus (from 276), also an able soldier, not merely drove them out afresh--he is said to have taken from them seventy towns--but also advanced again on the aggressive, crossed the Rhine, and drove the Germans back over the Neckar. He did not, however, renew the lines of the earlier time,[96] but contented himself with erecting and occupying at the more important positions of the Rhine _têtes de pont_ on the other bank,--that is, he reverted nearly to such arrangements as had subsisted here before Vespasian. At the same time the Franks were defeated by his generals in the northern province. Great masses of the vanquished Germans were sent as forced settlers to Gaul, and above all to Britain. In this way the frontier of the Rhine was won back and handed over to the later empire. No doubt, like the rule on the right bank of the Rhine, peace on the left had passed away beyond recall. The Alamanni stood in a threatening attitude opposite to Basel and Strassburg, the Franks opposite to Cologne. By their side other tribes presented themselves. The fact that the Burgundiones, once settled beyond the Elbe, advancing westward as far as the upper Main, threatened Gaul, is first mentioned under the emperor Probus; a few years later the Saxons, in concert with the Franks, began their attacks by sea on the north coast of Gaul as on the Roman Britain. But under the--for the most part--vigorous and capable emperors of the Diocletiano-Constantinian house, and even under their immediate successors, the Romans kept the threatening inundation of peoples within measured bounds.

[Sidenote: Romanising of the Germans.]

To depict the Germans in their national development is not the task of the historian of the Romans; for him they appear only as hindering or as destroying. An interpenetration of the two nationalities, and a mixed culture thence resulting, such as the Romanised land of the Celts presented, Roman Germany has none to show; or--so far as concerns our conception of it--it coincides with the Romano-Gallic all the more, since the Germanic territories on the left bank of the Rhine, which remained for a considerable time in the Roman possession, were pervaded throughout with Celtic elements, and even those on the right, deprived for the most part of their original population, obtained the majority of the new settlers from Gaul. Communal centres, such as the Celtic system possessed in large number, were wanting to the German element. Partly on that account, partly in consequence of outward circumstances, the Roman element was able, as has been already brought out (p. 102), to develop itself sooner and more fully in the Germanic east than in the Celtic regions. The encampments of the army of the Rhine, all of which fell within Roman Germany, were of essential influence in this respect. The larger of them obtained, partly through the traders who attached themselves to the army, partly, and above all, through the veterans who remained in their wonted quarters even after their discharge, an urban appendage--a town of huts (_canabae_), separate from the military quarters proper; everywhere, and particularly in Germany, towns proper grew in time out of these at the legionary camps and especially the headquarters. At their head stood the Roman town of the Ubii, originally the second largest camp of the army of the lower Rhine, then from the year 50 onward a Roman colony (p. 99), exercising the most important effect in elevating Roman civilisation in the region of the Rhine. Here the camp-town gave place to that of the Roman plantation; subsequently urban rights were obtained, without shifting the quarters of the troops, by the settlements belonging to the two great camps of the lower Rhine--Ulpia Noviomagus, in the land of the Batavi, and Ulpia Traiana, near Vetera--from Trajan, and in the third century by the military capital of upper Germany, Mogontiacum. No doubt these civil towns always retained a subordinate position by the side of the military centres of administration independent of them.

[Sidenote: Roman Germanising.]

If we look beyond the limit where this narrative closes, we certainly find, instead of the Romanising of the Germans, in some measure a Germanising of the Romans. The last phase of the Roman state was marked by its becoming barbarian, and especially becoming Germanised; and the beginnings of the process reach far back. It commences with the peasantry in the colonate, passes on to the troop as modelled by the emperor Severus, seizes then on the officers and magistrates, and ends with the hybrid Romano-Germanic states of the Visigoths in Spain and Gaul, the Vandals in Africa, above all, with the Italy of Theoderic. For the understanding of this last phase there is certainly needed an insight into the political development of the one as of the other nation. Unfortunately, the enquiry into early German history is here at fault. It is true that the political arrangements into which these Germans entered as servants or joint rulers are well known, far better than the systematic history of the same epoch. But over the primitive condition of the Germans floats that gray morning-haze in which sharp outlines are lost. German heathenism, apart from the far north, perished before the time of which we have knowledge; and the religious elements, which are never wanting in a national war, we know doubtless for the Sassanidae, but not for the Marcomani. The beginnings of the political development of the Germans are delineated for us in part by the picture of Tacitus--many-coloured, hampered by modelling itself on the ideas of a fading past, and but too often keeping silence as to elements of really decisive moment--while in part we must take them from the hybrid states which arose on formerly Roman soil and had Roman elements everywhere inwoven. Here our records seldom give us German technical terms, but substitute Latin descriptions which are plainly inadequate, and here, in general, we miss those sharply-defined ideas which our studies of classical history offer us in plenty. It is characteristic of our German nation that it has not been permitted to develop itself by German effort from German origins, and we may connect with this the fact that German scholarship has studied the beginnings and characters of other nations with more success than it has won in the study of its own.

Footnotes.

[62: This division of a province among three governors is without parallel elsewhere in Roman administration. The relation of Africa and Numidia offers doubtless an external analogy, but was politically conditioned by the position of the senatorial governor to the imperial military commandant, while the three governors of Belgica were uniformly imperial; and it is not at all easy to see why the two Germanic ones had districts within the Belgica assigned to them instead of districts of their own. Nothing but the taking back of the frontier, while the hitherto subsisting name was retained--just as the Transdanubian Dacia continued subsequently to subsist in name as Cis-Danubian--explains this singular peculiarity.]

[63: The strength of the _auxilia_ of the upper army may be fixed for the epoch of Domitian and Trajan with tolerable certainty at about 10,000 men. A document of the year 90 enumerates four _alae_ and fourteen _cohortes_ of this army; to these is to be added at least one cohort (_I Germanorum_), which, it can be shown, did garrison-duty there as well in the year 82 as in the year 116; whether two _alae_ which were there in the year 82, and at least three cohorts which were there in 116, and which are absent from the list of the year 90, were doing garrison work there in 90 or not, is doubtful, but most of them probably were away from the province before 90 or only came into it after 90. Of those nineteen _auxilia_ one was certainly (_coh. I Damascenorum_), another perhaps (_ala I Flavia gemina_), a double division. At the minimum, therefore, the figure indicated above results as the normal state of the _auxilia_ of this army, and it cannot have been materially exceeded. But the _auxilia_ of lower Germany, whose garrisons were less extended, may well have been smaller in number.]

[64: At the frontier bridge over the rivulet Abrinca, now Vinxt, the old boundary of the archdioceses of Cologne and Treves, stood two altars, that on the side of Remagen dedicated to the Boundaries, the Spirit of the place, and Jupiter (_Finibus et Genio loci et Iovi optimo maximo_) by soldiers of the 30th lower German legion; the other on the side of Andernach, dedicated to Jupiter, the Genius of the place, and Juno, by a soldier of the 8th Upper Germanic (Brambach, 649, 650).]

[65: _Limes_ (from _limus_, across) is a technical expression foreign to the state of things under our [German] law, and hence not to be reproduced in our language, derived from the fact that the Roman division of land, which excludes all natural boundaries, separates the squares, into which the ground coming under the head of private property is divided, by intermediate paths of a definite breadth; these intermediate paths are the _limites_, and so far the word always denotes at once the boundary drawn by man's hand, and the road constructed by man's hand. The word retains this double signification even in application to the state (Rudorff, _Grom. Inst._ p. 289, puts the matter incorrectly); _limes_ is not every imperial frontier, but only that which is marked out by human hands, and arranged at the same time for being patrolled and having posts stationed for frontier-defence (_Vita Hadriani_, 12; _locis in quibus barbari non fluminibus, sed limitibus dividuntur_), such as we find in Germany and in Africa. Therefore there are applied to the laying-out of this _limes_ the terms that serve to designate the construction of roads, _aperire_ (Velleius, ii. 121, which is not to be understood, as Müllenhoff, _Zeitschr. f. d. Alterth._, new series, ii. p. 32, would have it, like our opening of a turnpike), _munire_, _agere_ (Frontinus, _Strat._ i. 3, 10: _limitibus per CXX m. p. actis_). Therefore the _limes_ is not merely a longitudinal line, but also of a certain breadth (Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 50; _castra in limite locat_). Hence the construction of the _limes_ is often combined with that of the _agger_--that is, of the road-embankment (Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 7: _cuncta novis limitibus aggeribusque permunita_), and the shifting of it with the transference of frontier-posts (Tacitus, _Germ._ 29: _limite acto promotisque praesidiis_). The Limes is thus the imperial frontier-road, destined for the regulation of frontier-intercourse, inasmuch as the crossing of it was allowed only at certain points corresponding to the bridges of the river boundary, and elsewhere forbidden. This was doubtless effected in the first instance by patrolling the line, and, so long as this was done, the _limes_ remained a boundary road. It remained so too, when it was fortified on both sides, as was done in Britain and at the mouth of the Danube; the Britannic wall is also termed _limes_ (p. 187, note 2). Posts might also be stationed at the allowed points of crossing, and the intervening spaces of the frontier-roads might be in some way rendered impassable. In this sense the biographer of Hadrian says in the above-quoted passage that at the _limites_ he _stipitibus magnis in modum muralis saepis funditus iactis atque conexis barbaros separavit_. By this means the frontier-road was converted into a frontier-barricade provided with certain passages through it, and such was the _limes_ of upper Germany in the developed shape to be set forth in the sequel. We may add that the word is not used with this special import in the time of the republic; and beyond doubt this conception of the _limes_ only originated with the institution of the chain of posts enclosing the state, where natural boundaries were wanting--a protection of the imperial frontier, which was foreign to the republic, but was the foundation of the Augustan military system, and above all, of the Augustan system of tolls.]

[66: The Sugambri transplanted to the left bank are not subsequently mentioned under this name, and are probably the Cugerni dwelling below Cologne on the Rhine. But that the Sugambri on the right bank, whom Strabo mentions, were at least still in existence in the time of Claudius, is shown by the cohort named after this emperor, and thus certainly formed under him, doubtless of Sugambri (_C. I. L._ iii. p. 877); and they, as well as the four other probably Augustan cohorts of this name, confirm what Strabo also in a strict sense says, that these Sugambri belonged to the Roman empire. They disappeared doubtless, like the Mattiaci, only amidst the tempests of the migration of nations.]

[67: The fortress of Niederbiber, not far from the point at which the Wied falls into the Rhine, as well as that of Arzbach, near Montabaur, in the region of the Lahn, belong to upper Germany. The special significance of the former stronghold, the largest fortress in upper Germany, turned on the fact that it, in a military point of view, closed the Roman lines on the right bank of the Rhine.]

[68: The levies (_Eph. Epigr._ v. p. 274) require us to assume this, while the Frisians, as they come forward in the year 58 (Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 54) rather appear independent; the elder Pliny also (_H. N._ xxv. 3, 22) under Vespasian names them, looking back to the time of Germanicus, as _gens tum fida_. Probably this is connected with the distinction between the _Frisii_ and _Frisiavones_ in Pliny, _H. N._ iv. 15, 101, and between the _Frisii maiores_ and _minores_ in Tacitus, _Germ._ 34. The Frisians that remained Roman would be the western; the free, the eastern; if the Frisians generally reach as far as the Ems (Ptolem. iii. 11, 7), those subsequently Roman may have settled perhaps to the westward of the Yssel. We may not put them elsewhere than on the coast that still bears their name; the designation in Pliny, iv. 17, 106, stands isolated, and is beyond doubt incorrect.]

[69: The fourth upper German legion was sent in the year 58 to Asia Minor on account of the Armeno-Parthian war (Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 35).]

[70: Frontinus, _Strat._ iv. 3, 14. In their territory the advancing troops must have constructed a reserve station and a depot; according to tiles recently found near Mirabeau-sur-Bèze, about fourteen miles north-east of Dijon, men of at least five of the advancing legions had executed buildings here (_Hermes_, xix. 437).]