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.
Mogontiacum.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.Mattiaci.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
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.
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.
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 miles82) 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.
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
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
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.
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.
War with the Alamanni.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.Severus Antoninus. 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, Alexander.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.
Maximinus.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 signal92 for the Germans pushing forward especially towards the lower Rhine.93 The Franks.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.
Gallienus.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, Postumus.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
BRITAIN.
Caesar and the Julian Emperors.Ninety–seven years elapsed from the time when Roman troops had entered, subdued, and again abandoned the great island in the north–western ocean, before the Roman government resolved to repeat the voyage and permanently to occupy Britain. Certainly Caesar’s Britannic expedition had not been, like his campaigns against the Germans, a mere forward movement of defence. So far as his arm reached, he had made the individual tribes subject to the empire, and had regulated their annual tribute to it in this case as in Gaul. The leading tribe, too, which was to be firmly attached to Rome by its privileged position and thereby to become the fulcrum of Roman rule, was found; the Trinovantes (Essex) were to take up on the Celtic island the same part—more advantageous than honourable—as the Haedui and the Remi on the Gallic continent. The bloody feud between the prince Cassivellaunus and the princely house of Camalodunum (Colchester) had been the immediate cause of the Roman invasion; to reinstate this house Caesar had landed, and the object was for the moment attained. Beyond doubt Caesar never deceived himself as to the fact that the tribute, as well as the protectorate, were in the first instance mere words; but these words were a programme which could not but bring about, and was intended to bring about, the permanent occupation of the island by Roman troops.
Caesar himself did not get so far as permanently to organise the affairs of the subject island; and for his successors Britain was a perplexity. The Britons who had become subject to the empire certainly did not long pay—perhaps never paid at all—the tribute which was due. The protectorate over the dynasty of Camalodunum must have been still less respected, and had simply as its effect, that princes and scions of that house again and again appeared in Rome and invoked the intervention of the Roman government against neighbours and rivals. Thus king Dubnovellaunus, probably the successor of the prince of the Trinovantes confirmed by Caesar, came as a refugee to Rome to the emperor Augustus, and so, later, one of the princes of the same house came to the emperor Gaius.97
In fact the expedition to Britain was a necessary part of the heritage left by Caesar. Already during the Dual Rule Caesar the younger had projected such an expedition, and had only desisted from it on account of the more urgent necessity of procuring quiet in Illyricum, or on account of the strained relation with Antonius, which proved useful to the Parthians in the first instance as well as to the Britons. The courtly poets of the earlier years of Augustus celebrated variously in anticipation the Britannic conquest; the programme of Caesar was thus accepted and adopted by his successor. When the monarchy was consolidated, all Rome thereupon expected that the close of the civil war would be followed by the Britannic expedition; the complaints of the poets as to the dreadful strife, but for which the Britons would long since have been led in triumphal procession to the Capitol, became transformed into the proud hope of adding to the empire the new province of Britain. The expedition was, moreover, repeatedly announced (727, 728)27, 26., yet Augustus, without formally abandoning the undertaking, soon desisted from carrying it out; and Tiberius, faithful to his maxim, adhered in this question also to the system of his father.98 The worthless thoughts of the last Julian emperor roamed doubtless also over the ocean; but serious things he was incapable of even planning. It was the government of Claudius that first took up the plan of the dictator afresh and carried it out.
The reasons for, and against, the occupation of Britain.What were the determining motives, on the one side as on other, may be at least partially discerned. Augustus himself laid it down that the occupation of the island was not necessary from a military point of view—seeing that its inhabitants were not in a position to annoy the Romans on the continent—and was not advantageous for the finances; that what could be drawn from Britain flowed into the exchequer of the empire in the form of import and export duties at the Gallic harbours; that at least a legion and some cavalry would be requisite as garrison, and after deduction of its cost from the tribute of the island not much would be left.99 All this was indisputably correct, but it was not the whole truth. Experience showed later that a legion was far from sufficient to hold the island. We must further take into account, what the government certainly had no occasion to say, that, considering the state of weakness to which the Roman army had been brought by the internal policy of Augustus, it could not but appear very hazardous to banish a considerable fragment of it, once for all, to a distant island of the North Sea. There was presumably only the choice of keeping aloof from Britain or increasing the army on its account; and with Augustus considerations of internal policy always outweighed those of an external character.
Conviction of its necessity predominant.But yet the conviction of the necessity for subduing Britain must have predominated with Roman statesmen. Caesar’s conduct would be inconceivable if we do not presuppose that conviction in his case. Augustus at first formally recognised, and never formally disowned, the aim proposed by Caesar, notwithstanding its inconvenience. It was precisely the governments that were the most far–seeing and most tenacious of purpose—those of Claudius, Nero, and Domitian—that laid the foundation for the conquest of Britain, or extended the work; and, after it had taken place, it was never regarded in any such light as, let us say, the conquest by Trajan of Dacia and Mesopotamia. If the maxim of government, elsewhere adhered to almost inviolably, that the Roman empire had simply to fill, but not to extend, its bounds, was permanently set aside only in respect of Britain, the cause lies in the fact that the Celts could not be subdued in such a way as Rome’s interest demanded, on the continent alone. This nation was to all appearance more connected than separated by the narrow arm of the sea which parts England and France; the same names of peoples meet us on the one side and on the other; the bounds of the individual states often reach over the Channel; the chief seat of the priestly system, which here more than anywhere else pervaded the whole nationality, was from of old the islands of the North Sea. These islanders indeed were not able to wrest the continent of Gaul from the Roman legions; but, if the conqueror of Gaul himself, and, later, the Roman government in Gaul, pursued other aims than in Syria and Egypt—if the Celts were to be annexed as members to the Italian nation—this task remained quite impracticable, so long as the subjugated and the free Celtic territories touched each other over the sea, and the enemy of the Romans as well as the Roman deserter found an asylum in Britain.100 In the first instance the subjugation of the southern coast sufficed for this purpose, although the effect was naturally the greater, the farther the free Celtic territory was pushed back.101 The special regard of Claudius for his Gallic home and his knowledge of Gallic relations may also have played a part in the matter.
Occasion for the war.What furnished occasion for the war was the fact that that very principality which sustained a certain dependence on Rome under the leadership of its kingCunobelinus. Cunobelinus—this was Shakespeare’s Cymbeline—extended widely its rule,102 and emancipated itself from the Roman protectorate. One of his sons—Adminius, who had revolted against his father, came to the emperor Gaius desiring protection, and upon his successor refusing to deliver up to the British ruler these his subjects, the war arose in the first instance against the father and the brothers of this Adminius. The real motive, of course, was the indispensable need for completing the conquest of a nation hitherto but half vanquished and keeping closely together.
Military arrangements for occupying the island.That the occupation of Britain could not ensue without a contemporary increase of the standing army was also the view of those statesmen who gave occasion to it; three of the Rhine–legions and one from the Danube were destined thither,103 but at the same time two newly instituted legions were assigned to the Germanic armies. An able soldier, Aulus Plautius, was selected as leader of this expedition, and at the same time as first governor of the province; it departed for the island in the year 43. The soldiers showed themselves reluctant, more doubtless because of the banishment to the distant island than from fear of the foe. One of the leading men, perhaps the soul of the undertaking, Narcissus, the emperor’s cabinet–secretary, wished to instil into them courage; they did not allow the slave to utter a word for their shouts of scoffing, but did withal as he wished and embarked.
Course of the occupation.The occupation of the island was not attended by any special difficulty. The natives stood, in a political as in a military point of view, at the same low stage of development which Caesar had previously found in the island. Kings or queens reigned in the several cantons, which had no outward bond of conjunction and were at perpetual feud with one another. The men were doubtless possessed of bodily strength, endurance, and bravery—despising death; and were in particular expert horsemen. But the Homeric war–chariot, which was still a reality here, and on which the princes of the land themselves wielded the reins, as little held its ground against the compact squadrons of Roman cavalry as the foot soldier without coat of mail and helmet, defended only by the small shield, was with his short javelin and his broad sword a match in close combat for the short Roman knife, or even for the heavy pilum of the legionary, and sling–bullet and arrow of the light Roman troops. To the army of about 40,000 well–trained soldiers the natives could oppose no corresponding defensive force. The disembarkation did not even encounter resistance; the Britons had accounts as to the reluctant temper of the troops and no longer expected the landing. King Cunobelinus had died shortly before; the opposition was led by his two sons Caratacus and Togodumnus. The invading army had its march at once directed to Camalodunum,104 and in a rapid course of victory it reached as far as the Thames; here a halt was made, chiefly perhaps to give the emperor the opportunity of plucking the easy laurels in person. So soon as he arrived, the river was crossed; the British levy was beaten, on which occasion Togodumnus met his death; Camalodunum itself was taken. His brother Caratacus, it is true, obstinately continued the resistance, and gained for himself, in victory or defeat, a proud name with friend and foe; nevertheless, the progress of the Romans was not to be checked. One prince after another was beaten and deposed—the triumphal arch of Claudius names eleven British kings as conquered by him; and what did not succumb to the Roman arms yielded to the Roman largesses. Numerous men of rank accepted the possessions which the emperor conferred on them at the expense of their countrymen; various kings also submitted to the modest position of vassals, as indeed Cogidumnus the king of the Regni (Chichester) and Prasutagus the king of the Iceni (Norfolk) bore rule for a series of years as dependent princes. But in most districts of the island, which had hitherto been monarchically governed throughout, the conquerors introduced their communal constitution, and gave what was still left to be administered into the hands of the local men of rank—a course which brought in its train wretched factions and internal quarrels. Even under the first governor the whole level country as far as the Humber seems to have come into Roman power; the Iceni, for example, had already submitted to him. But it was not merely with the sword that the Romans made way for themselves. Veterans were settled at Camalodunum immediately after its capture; thus the first town of Roman organisation and Roman burgess–rights, the “Claudian colony of victory,” was founded in Britain, destined to be the capital of the country. Immediately afterwards began also the profitable working of the British mines, particularly of the productive lead–mines; there are British leaden bars from the sixth year after the invasion. Evidently with like rapidity the stream of Roman merchants and artisans poured itself over the field newly opened up; if Camalodunum received Roman colonists, Roman townships, which soon obtained legally urban organisation, were formed elsewhere in the south of the island as a mere result of freedom of traffic and of immigration, particularly at the hot springs of Sulis (Bath), in Verulamium (St. Albans to the north–west of London), and above all in the natural emporium of trading on a great scale—Londinium at the mouth of the Thames.
The advance of the foreign rule asserted itself everywhere, not merely in new taxes and levies, but perhaps still more in commerce and trade. When Plautius after four years of administration was recalled, he entered Rome in triumph, the last citizen who attained such honour, and honours and orders were lavished on the officers and soldiers of the victorious legions; triumphal arches were erected to the emperor in Rome, and thereafter in other towns, on account of victory achieved “without any losses whatever;” the crown–prince born shortly before the invasion received, instead of his grandfather’s name, that of Britannicus. We may discern in these matters the unmilitary age disused to victories with loss, and the extravagance in keeping with political dotage; but, if the invasion of Britain has not much significance from a military standpoint, testimony must withal be borne to the leading men that they set about the work in an energetic and persistent fashion, and that the painful and dangerous time of transition from independent to foreign rule in Britain was an unusually short one.
After the first rapid success, it is true, there were developed difficulties and even dangers, which the occupation of the island brought not merely to the conquered but also to the conquerors.
Resistance in West Britain.They were masters of the level country, but not of the mountains or of the sea. The west above all gave trouble to the Romans. No doubt in the extreme south–west, in what is now Cornwall, the old nationality maintained itself, probably more because the conquerors concerned themselves but little about this remote corner than because it directly rebelled against them. But the Silures in the south of the modern Wales, and their northern neighbours the Ordovici, perseveringly defied the Roman arms;Mona. the island Mona (Anglesey), adjacent to the latter, was the true focus of national and religious resistance. It was not the character of the ground alone that hindered the advance of the Romans; what Britain had been for Gaul, that the large island Ivernia was now for Britain, and especially for this west coast; the freedom on the one side of the channel did not allow the foreign rule to take firm root in the other. We clearly recognise in the laying out of the legionary camps that the invasion was here arrested. Under the successor of Plautius the camp for the 14th legion was laid out at the confluence of the Tern with the Severn near Viroconium (Wroxeter, not far from Shrewsbury);105 presumably about the same time, to the south of it, that of Isca (Caerleon = Castra legionis) for the 2d; to the north that of Deva (Chester = Castra) for the 20th; these three camps shut off the region of Wales towards the south, north, and west, and protected thus the pacified land against the mountains that remained free. Into this region the last prince of Camalodunum, Caratacus, threw himself, after his home had become Roman. He was defeated by the successor of Plautius, Publius Ostorius Scapula, in the territory of the Ordovici, and soon afterwards delivered up by the terrified Brigantes, with whom he had taken refuge, to the Romans (51), and conducted with all his adherents to Italy. In surprise he asked, when he saw the proud city, how the masters of such palaces could covet the poor huts of his native country. But with this the west was by no means subdued; the Silures above all persevered in obstinate resistance, and the fact that the Roman general announced his purpose of extirpating them to the last man did not contribute to make them more submissive.Paullinus. The enterprising governor, Gaius Suetonius Paullinus, attempted some years later (61) to bring into Roman power the chief seat of resistance, the island of Mona, and in spite of the furious opposition with which he was met, and in which the priests and the women took the lead, the sacred trees, beneath which many a Roman captive had bled, fell under the axes of the legionaries. But out of the occupation of this last asylum of the Celtic priesthood there was developed a dangerous crisis in the subject territory itself; and the governor was not destined to complete the conquest of Mona.
Boudicca.In Britain, too, the alien rule had to stand the test of national insurrection. What was undertaken by Mithradates in Asia Minor, by Vercingetorix among the Celts of the continent, by Civilis among the subject Germans, was attempted among the insular Celts by a woman, the wife of one of those vassal–princes confirmed by Rome, the Queen of the Iceni, Boudicca. Her deceased husband had, to secure the future of his wife and his daughters, bequeathed his sovereignty to the emperor Nero, and divided his property between the latter and his own relatives. The emperor took the legacy and, in addition, what was not meant for him; the princely cousins were put in chains, the widow was scourged, the daughters maltreated in more shameful fashion. Then came other wrongs at the hands of the later Neronian government. The veterans settled in Camalodunum chased the earlier possessors from house and homestead as it pleased them, without the authorities interfering to check them. The presents conferred by the emperor Claudius were confiscated as revocable gifts. Roman ministers, who at the same time trafficked in money, drove in this way the Britannic communities, one after the other, to bankruptcy. The moment was favourable. The governor Paullinus, more brave than cautious, was just then, as we have said, with the flower of the Roman army in the remote island of Mona, and this attack on the most sacred seat of the national religion exasperated men’s minds as much as it paved the way for insurrection. The old vehement Celtic faith, which had given the Romans so much trouble, burst forth once more, for the last time, in a mighty flame. The weakened and far separated camps of the legions in the west and in the north afforded no protection to the whole south–east of the island with its flourishing Roman towns.
Attack on Camalodunum.Above all, the capital, Camalodunum, was utterly defenceless; there was no garrison. The walls were not completed, although the temple of their imperial founder, the new god Claudius, was so. The west of the island, probably kept down by the legions stationed there, seems not to have taken part in the rising, and as little the non–subject north; but, as frequently occurred in Celtic revolts, in the year 61 on a concerted signal all the rest of the subject territory rose in a moment against the foreigners, the Trinovantes, driven out of their capital, taking the lead. The second commander, who at the time represented the governor, the procurator Decianus Catus, had at the last moment sent what soldiers he had to its protection; they were 200 men. They defended themselves with the veterans and the other Romans capable of arms for two days in the temple; then they were overpowered, and all that was Roman in the town perished. The like fate befell the chief emporium of Roman trade, Londinium, and a third flourishing Roman city, Verulamium (St. Albans, north–west of London), as well as the foreigners scattered over the island; it was a national Vesper like that of Mithradates, and the number of victims—alleged to be 70,000—was not less. The procurator gave up the cause of Rome as lost, and fled to the continent. The Roman army, too, became involved in the disaster. A number of scattered detachments and garrisons succumbed to the assaults of the insurgents. Quintus Petillius Cerialis, who held the command in the camp of Lindum, marched on Camalodunum with the 9th legion; he came too late to save it, and, assailed by an enormous superiority of force, lost in the battle all his infantry; the camp was stormed by the Brigantes. The same fate well–nigh overtook the general–in–chief. Hastily returning from the island of Mona, he called to him the 2d legion stationed at Isca; but it did not obey the command, and with only about 10,000 men Paullinus had to take up the unequal struggle against the numberless and victorious army of the insurgents. If ever soldiers made good the errors of their leader it was on the day when this small band—chiefly the thenceforth celebrated 14th legion—achieved, doubtless to its own surprise, a full victory, and once more established the Roman rule in Britain. Little was wanting to bring the name of Paullinus into association with that of Varus. But success decides, and here it remained with the Romans.106 The guilty commandant of the legion that remained aloof anticipated the court–martial, and threw himself upon his sword. The queen Boudicca drank the cup of poison. The otherwise brave general was not indeed brought to trial, as seemed to be at first the intention of the government, but was soon under a suitable pretext recalled.
Subjugation of West Britain.The subjugation of the western portions of the island was not continued at once by the successors of Paullinus. The able general Sextus Julius Frontinus first under Vespasian forced the Silures to recognise the Roman rule; his successor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, after obstinate conflicts with the Ordovici, effected what Paullinus had not achieved, and occupied in the year 78 the island of Mona. Afterwards there is no mention of active resistance in these regions; the camp of Viroconium could probably about this time be dispensed with, and the legion thereby set free could be employed in northern Britain. But the other two legionary camps still remained on the spot down to the time of Diocletian, and only disappeared in the later arrangements of the troops. If political considerations may have contributed to this (p. 190), yet the resistance of the west was probably continued even later, perhaps supported by communications with Ivernia. Moreover, the complete absence of Roman traces in the interior of Wales, and the Celtic nationality maintaining itself there up to the present day, tell in favour of this view.
Subjugation of Northern Britain.In the north the camp of the 9th Spanish legion in Lindum (Lincoln) formed the centre of the Roman position to the east of Viroconium. In closest contact with this camp in north England was the most powerful principality of the island, that of the Brigantes (Yorkshire); it had not properly submitted, but the queen, Cartimandus, sought to keep peace with the conquerors and showed herself compliant to them. The party hostile to the Romans had attempted to break loose here in the year 50, but the attempt had been quickly suppressed. Caratacus, beaten in the west, had hoped to be able to continue his resistance in the north, but the queen delivered him, as already stated, to the Romans. These internal dissensions and domestic quarrels must have partly influenced the rising against Paullinus, in which we find the Brigantes in a leading position, and which fell with all its weight upon this very legion of the north. Meanwhile the Roman party of the Brigantes, however, was influential enough to obtain the restoration of the government of Cartimandus after the insurrection was defeated. But some years afterwards the patriotic party there, supported by the tidings of revolt from Rome, which during the civil war after the downfall of Nero filled all the west, brought about a new rising of the Brigantes against the foreign rule, at the head of which stood Cartimandus’s former husband, set aside and scorned by her—the veteran warrior Venutius. It was only after prolonged conflicts that the mighty people was subdued by Petillius Cerialis, the same who had fought unsuccessfully under Paullinus against these same Britons, now one of the most noted generals of Vespasian, and the first governor of the island nominated by him. The gradually slackening resistance of the west made it possible to combine one of the three legions hitherto stationed there with that stationed in Lindum, and to advance the camp itself from Lindum to the chief place of the Brigantes, Eburacum (York). But, so long as the west offered serious resistance, nothing further was done in the north for the extension of the Roman bounds; at the Caledonian forest, says an author of the time of Vespasian, the Roman arms were arrested for thirty years.
Agricola.It was Agricola who first, after his work was over in the west, energetically set himself to the subjugation also of the north. First of all, he created for himself a fleet, without which the provisioning of the troops in these mountains, which afforded few supplies, would have been impossible. Supported by this fleet he reached, under Titus (80), as far as the estuary of the Tava (Frith of Tay), into the region of Perth and Dundee, and employed the three following campaigns in gaining an exact knowledge of the wide districts between this frith and the previous Roman boundary on the two seas, in breaking everywhere the local resistance, and in constructing intrenchments at the fitting places; with reference to which, in particular, the natural line of defence which is formed by the two friths running deeply into the land, of Clota (Clyde) near Glasgow, and Bodotria (Forth) near Edinburgh, was selected for a basis. This advance called the whole Highlands under arms; but the mighty battle which the united Caledonian tribes offered to the legions between the two friths of Forth and Tay at the Graupian mountains ended with the victory of Agricola. According to his view the subjugation of the island, once begun, had to be also completed, nay, even extended to Ivernia; and in favour of that course there might be urged, with respect to Roman Britain, what the occupation of the island had brought about with respect to Gaul. Moreover, with an energetic carrying out of the occupation of the islands as a whole, the expenditure of men and money for the future would probably be reduced.
Caledonia abandoned.The Roman government did not follow these counsels. How far personal and spiteful motives may have co–operated in the recall of the victorious general in the year 85, who for that matter had remained longer in office than was usually the case elsewhere, must be left undetermined. The coincidence of the last victories of the general in Scotland and the first defeats of the emperor in the region of the Danube was certainly in a high degree annoying. But for the putting a stop to the operations in Britain,107 and for the calling away, which apparently then ensued, of one of the four legions with which Agricola had executed his campaigns to Pannonia, a quite sufficient explanation is furnished by the military position of the state at that time—the extension of the Roman rule to the right bank of the Rhine in upper Germany and the outbreak of the dangerous wars in Pannonia. This, indeed, does not explain why, withal, an end should be put to the pressing forward towards the north, and northern Scotland as well as Ireland should be left to themselves.
Probable grounds for this policy.That thenceforth the government desisted not on account of accidents of the situation for the moment, but once for all, from pushing forward the frontier of the empire, and amidst all change of persons adhered to this course, we are taught by the whole later history of the island, and taught especially by the laborious and costly wall–structures to be mentioned immediately. Whether the completion of the conquest was renounced by them in the true interest of the state, is another question. That the imperial finances would only suffer loss by this extension of the bounds was even now urged, quite as much as it formerly was against the occupation of the island itself; but could not be decisive of the matter.108 In a military point of view the occupation was capable of being carried out, as Agricola had conceived it, beyond doubt without material difficulty. But the consideration might turn the scale, that the Romanising of the regions still free would have to encounter great difficulty on account of the diversity of race. The Celts in England proper belonged throughout to those of the continent; national name, faith, language, were common to both. As the Celtic nationality of the continent had found a support in the island, on the other hand the Romanising of Gaul necessarily carried its influence over to England, and to this especially Rome owed the fact that Britain became Romanised with so surprising rapidity. But the natives of Ireland and Scotland belonged to another stock and spoke another language; the Briton understood their Gaelic probably as little as the German understood the language of the Scandinavians. The Caledonians—with the Iverni the Romans hardly came into contact—are described throughout as barbarians of the wildest type. On the other hand, the priest of the oak (Derwydd, Druida) exercised his office on the Rhone as in Anglesey, but not in the island of the west nor in the mountains of the north. If the Romans had waged the war chiefly to bring the domain of the Druids entirely into their power, this aim was in some measure attained. Beyond doubt at another time all these considerations would not have induced the Romans to renounce the sea–frontier on the north when brought so near to them, and at least Caledonia would have been occupied. But the Rome of that time was no longer able to leaven further regions with Roman habits; the productive power and the progressive spirit of the people had disappeared from it. At least that sort of conquest, which cannot be enforced by decrees and marches, would have hardly succeeded, had they attempted it.
Fortifying of the northern frontier.Their aim therefore was to arrange the northern frontier appropriately for defence, and to this object their military works were thenceforth directed. Eburacum remained the military centre. The wide territory occupied by Agricola was retained and furnished with forts, which served as advanced posts for the headquarters in rear; probably the greatest part of the non–legionary troops were employed for this purpose. The construction of connected lines of fortification followed later. The first of the kind proceeded from Hadrian, The wall of Hadrian.and is also remarkable, in so far as it still in a certain sense subsists to the present day, and is more completely known than any other of the great military structures of the Romans. It is, strictly taken, a military road protected on both sides by fortifications, leading from sea to sea for a length of about seventy miles, westward to the Solway Frith, and eastward to the mouth of the Tyne. The defence on the north is formed by a huge wall, originally at least 16 feet high and 8 feet thick, built on the two outer sides of square stones, filled up between with rubble and mortar, in front of which stretched a no less imposing fosse, 9 feet in depth and 34 feet or more in breadth at the top. Towards the south the road is protected by two parallel earthen ramparts, even now 6 to 7 feet high, between which is drawn a fosse 7 feet deep, with a margin raised to the south, so that the structure from rampart to rampart has a total breadth of 24 feet. Between the stone–wall and the earthen ramparts on the road itself lie the camp–stations and watch–houses, viz. at the distance of about four miles from one another the cohort–camps, constructed as forts, independently capable of defence, with gates opening towards all the four sides; between every two of these a smaller structure of a similar kind with sally–ports to the north and south; between every two of the latter four smaller watch–houses within call of each other. This structure of grand solidity, which must have required as garrison 10,000 to 12,000 men, formed thenceforth the basis of military operations in the north of England. It was not a frontier–wall in the proper sense; on the contrary, not merely did the posts that had already from Agricola’s time been pushed forward far beyond it continue to subsist by its side, but subsequently the line, The wall of Antoninus.about a half shorter, from the Frith of Forth to the Frith of Clyde, already occupied by Agricola with a chain of posts, was fortified in a similar but weaker way, first under Pius, then in a more comprehensive manner under Severus—as it were, as an advanced post for Hadrian’s wall.109 In point of construction this line was different from that of Hadrian only so far as it was limited to a considerable earthen wall, with fosse in front and road behind, and so was not adapted for defence toward the south; moreover, it too included a number of smaller camps. At this line the Roman imperial roads terminated,110 and, although there were Roman posts even beyond this—the most northerly point, at which the tombstone of a Roman soldier has been found, is Ardoch, between Stirling and Perth—the limit of the expeditions of Agricola, the Frith of Tay, may be regarded as subsequently still the limit of the Roman empire.