408 - Why Germania?

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:05]Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ancient Warfare podcast. My name is Jos Borthays. I'm the editor of Ancient Warfare magazine with me today are Murray McCaffrey, Mark DeSantis, Lindsay Powell, and Murray Dom, the assistant editor of Ancient Warfare magazine.

[00:00:19]Um Murray and I are currently putting the final touches to the 107th edition of Ancient Warfare, which is all about the Germanic campaigns of Augustus.

[00:00:29]But because that's not actually out yet, we thought we'd start out by just talking why Augustus decides that he needs to expand the Roman Empire in a generally northern direction.

[00:00:43]Because there's there's probably plenty to say about about why the Germans. And I think Murray offered himself as as the person to kick this all off. And he said he'd be brief.

[00:00:56]>> [laughter] >> Oh, you're holding me to the brief. Oh, not the controversial.

[00:01:00]Um sacrificial land Murray here.

[00:01:02]So, Germania, the Germanic tribes obviously are a really fascinating field for the the Romans when they start to encounter them. Um and as the issue will explore several great disasters and many campaigns as as Lindsay's bibliography can attest to. The interesting thing is that earlier in Roman history of course it's the Gauls that are the threat. The Gauls are the ones who sack Rome in 390 or 387 BC. And you can always appeal to the memory that the Gauls are a threat. And of course Julius Caesar does so in the 50s BC.

[00:01:37]But when the Cimbri and the Teutones appear out of nowhere on the Roman radar in the late 2nd century BC, you have a new threat. And they become the threat and the suddenly the the Cimbri and the Teutones who then generally become the Germans in the Roman idea that they can't tell the difference between the Swabian knot and a Marcomannic knot and a you're from the Quadi, no you're from the these, you're from the those. They're just all Germans. And there are even some people who call the Cimbri and the Teutones Celts or Gauls because they can't tell the difference between German tribes.

[00:02:15]And so of course when Marius finally defeats them in 101 BC you you have this northern neighbor who's sort of this evil empire so to use a Star Wars analogy on the on the edge of the Roman Empire who who needs addressing and obviously the first big step in that is Caesar's Gallic campaigns and he crosses into Germany which we'll deal with more in a moment.

[00:02:40]And that sort of leaves the door open and the the opportunity open I think for for Augustus to go right cross the Rhine. Here we go. Pretty brief. Pretty Can I just say pretty brief? Sorry I'm just going to I'm just going to pat myself on the back.

[00:02:53]>> [laughter] >> Brief. Well, I'm actually going to write straight on the back of that by quoting Florus who famously wrote epitome of Roman history when he says this, Augustus was well aware that his father Gaius Julius Caesar had twice crossed the Rhenus, the Rhine, bridged by bridging it and sought hostilities against Germania. Yet he conceived the desire of making it into a province to do him honor. And I'm wondering whether the him is actually referring to Augustus or actually referring to Caesar. Point is I think what we're seeing here is that the Germans were seen as the enemy as you've exactly described them. In fact in order to be able to make him look as if he's as good a general as Julius Caesar, Augustus says I'm going to make it a province.

[00:03:35]And then spends 35 years not doing that.

[00:03:40]Well, trying to >> [laughter] >> The difficulty we don't want to go into the next edition of of where where we discuss the wars per se but I think to to take Murray's point exactly is that as the Romans become more familiar with people further and further north, of course they get to contact more and more people.

[00:03:59]And that that the first sort of Germans that we get to hear of a lot are, for example, will be Suebi and Sugambri, Usipetes and Tencteri. These are the people that you get mentioned in the Gallic War.

[00:04:12]And the initial contacts is because those people are brought in by the Gauls and they're they're mercenaries effectively and that that there's there's money to be made and the Gauls see that they need to bolster them their resources their their manpower, they look to the very aggressive warrior-like people across the Rhine, right? And they they they've had these kinds of alliances in the past and where Caesar gets a bit pissed off, if I may say this on the podcast, is the fact that they keep interfering with his campaign in Gaul.

[00:04:45]And in the end out of a sheer sense of exasperation, because these people keep nipping back over the either the Moselle or the or or the Rhine itself, he sends some scouts over to say, "I need you to hand your people over that are causing me all this problem. Hand them over now." And the Germans send the emissaries back and they basically say, "Oi, excuse me, the Rhine marks our place and your place. What on earth do you want to take our place for when you got all that space over there?" And okay, is Caesar making this up in his text because it sounds like a good story, but it sort of in a sense takes you into the mindset of the two peoples.

[00:05:21]So, the Romans are coming ever nearer closer to what these independent nation-state nation people tribes think is their territory and naturally they're going to be they're going to defend it and part of their way of defending is to attack the enemy on the other side. As they do for centuries thereafter, whether it be the Rhine or the Danube. I think I think the fascinating thing is that that the the idea that hand your, you know, the the audacity and the arrogance of Rome telling a an unconquered people, "Hand over your your hostages." The the it's very strong-arm diplomacy, which doesn't work and won't work for millennia. And so, when Caesar finally bridges the Rhine in 55 BC, and he goes into a great deal of detail, you know, his account of the bridging of the Rhine is known by every student of Latin.

[00:06:14]The fascinating thing there is, I think he expects that once he's set foot on the northern shore of the Rhine and shown a Roman presence, he's expecting them to essentially collapse into >> [clears throat] >> uh you know, obedience, and they don't.

[00:06:30]And they they never do. Um and that idea of you know, is it 18 days he spends over the Rhine the first time? That's right. Um it's a very short, you know, "I'm here."

[00:06:40]And the the other fascinating thing is the what you get then from the sources, you know, the Florus quote that you gave us.

[00:06:47]The idea that Caesar not invited, but but you know, introduced us to the concept of let's conquer Germany, even though he only spent, you know, less than two three weeks there.

[00:06:58]You get the same idea in Britain.

[00:07:00]That he introduced us to the idea of Britain. And so, when you look at Roman foreign policy for the next century after Caesar's death, it's all about fulfilling the things that Caesar didn't do.

[00:07:12]Whether it be Britain, whether it be Parthia, or whether it be Germania.

[00:07:16]So, on that very subject, it's fascinating that that Augustus at one point entertained the idea of actually conceiving an invasion to conquer Britannia.

[00:07:25]And he didn't because there were two sides of this. One that there were enough British kings coming to him and basically bowing the knee, kissing the ring as it were, and making themselves clients of the Romans that in the Roman way of looking at the world world, An ally is sort of a kind of pseudo conquered nation. They basically do what we tell them to. So, I don't need to do send an army over there to deal with it.

[00:07:51]My pressing problem are the Cantabri and the Astures cuz I've got a conquest of the Iberian Peninsula to finish, which they do and they never go back to Britannia. So, I think that's an interesting that that the issue I think with with Germania specifically is this constant raiding.

[00:08:06]Inevitably we get to the to the Lollius so-called disaster because there you've got the humiliation of a Roman legionary eagle being taken and that's then seen as the pretense to then have a sort of counterstrike. But it's also set against the context that Augustus is actually patching up the parts of the empire to make it a a going concern. So, in the 20s BC he sorts out the Iberian Peninsula. In 20 BC Tiberius goes out to Parthia and sorts out an agreement there and gets back the standards and any, you know, people that are still alive from from earlier decades of of Roman interference in that area. And the humiliation is the fact that I fixed a a gaping sore in the east and now I created one in the north. It's very very bad news and I don't want that to happen again. And then you set this against the idea of the Cimbri Teutones as you said.

[00:08:59]And what's very interesting is that when when you read the history of through Cassius Dio and the other ones is that there are there are campaigns going on where the Romans are trying and I think it's Carinasus one is trying to deal with incursions from across the Rhine.

[00:09:14]That once the Germans understand there are things going on that are worth taking because the Romans are building cities and towns and whatever, they will keep coming down. Right? That because there's not really any defense on the Rhine. And that's what was remarkable in the research I found is that really it takes someone like uh Caesar will do the nominal conquest of Gaul and then effectively abandons it. He he leaves it to those people to sort out his legate to supposedly doing things in Lugdunum and elsewhere, but really there's not much what you would call Romanization or pacification going on.

[00:09:49]And then you slide all the way through his assassination, all the way through to the 30s of BC, and the Romans are still in Gaul.

[00:10:00]And there are people normally sent out there to you know, keep it in check. We don't know what the distribution distribution of the legions is at this time because they're mostly in Spain. Or they're fighting a civil war. So clearly that this area is sort of not quite conquered, not Romanized either, but it represents opportunity for people who want to do rich pickings and and pick stuff off. So Roman generals are going off there between Caesar and Augustus dealing with these incursions, and they're not mentioned much in in in any of the texts, but they are happening. I think the other thing that's fascinating about Augustus is we we tend to look at it that way that you sort of got the the Parthian problem that he deals with, and then there's the German problem that he doesn't.

[00:10:42]But there are other campaigns that he again doesn't stress that you know, like well, you're invading Kush, you're fighting Meroe, and she kind of you know, defeats you.

[00:10:53]Oh, where's the mention of that? You know, like oh, okay, cuz the border they agree on stays the border.

[00:10:58]Okay, interesting. He invades Arabia Felix. So he's invading Yemen and gets well, his his his prefect of Egypt gets his ass handed back to him by the um well, not by the Arabia Felix Felixians, whatever they're called, but actually by the Nabataeans who who betray him and lead him marching through the desert for 60 days. So he's got campaigns in every direction, actually.

[00:11:24]And the the southern campaigns are sort of like well, we won't mention those.

[00:11:28]Those were those were terri- Nothing disastrous happens. They don't lose a legion or a standard, and so they are kind of ignored, and he doesn't go south again. The eastern ones are successful, so he does emphasize those, and then of course, yes, the the the pathway is opened to the north, and we know, well, we'll find out next month, same bat time, same bat channel, what happens in the north, if you don't know already.

[00:11:52]Spoilers. But I but I think it's take that point up is that as as as these different spheres of influence are created, and some through allies, and some through direct intervention, putting a legion there or two, in in the situation in in the Iberian Peninsula, the 200-year war of conquest comes to an end in the 20s. Marcus Agrippa finally sort of, you know, quelled the the Astures and Cantabri, and now you have an over-concentration of legionary force. And that enables him, I think, to sort of say, "Where can I use these usefully?" And the near area to put them is in Gaul. The truth is, we don't know where they go in Gaul, right?

[00:12:28]So, they're somewhere in that area, and and and I would just think that in a sense, it's a combination of the means and the opportunity come together in the teens BC.

[00:12:39]And Lollius kind of trips over his feet and creates a a mess, which is convenient as a premise to go and do this war. But there's this kind of interesting optics aspect to this, which is I will look as great a military camp a commander as my my adopted father, if I can turn this area that he had kind of crossed over the bridge twice, and I can turn it into a province. Cuz this is the magic of Augustus, in a sense. He is he's very good at finishing the work that Caesar started, and it doesn't matter whether it's a battle or a building. He he does a lot of this. A lot of the buildings he's credited in in Rome as having built were really Julius Caesar's idea, but he got he got the time and the money to finish them. And I see that in the in the military and in the foreign policy, as well. But the difference between like the zones of activity that you sort of mentioned there in terms of active Roman activity in terms of the east, in terms of in terms of Africa, etc., in terms of Spain.

[00:13:35]All of those zones are areas where you've got civilized societies which are based in an urban setting to a certain extent, etc., with systems of you know, mercantile systems in place. And they're things that the Romans can come into and prospectively take over rather than Germania. Is the great unknown. It's the area which is does not conform necessarily to the the preconceived notion of traditional ancient civilization. It's not for the Romans that they can't just look back into their history in terms of civilized history and say, "Right, well, the the Greeks have been there before us. We We know what's there." It holds that that unknown element to it and I think that causes on the one hand aspirations for for the likes of Augustus and Tiberius, etc., to actually go there. It is, you know, that challenge that takes them beyond, as you're saying, Lindsay, the the idea of surpassing the great Julius. So, therefore, it is the next frontier that we need to take on, but it is a totally different ball game to what's gone before.

[00:14:47]>> Well, and you're kind of right in chapter 13 of my latest book by saying all those things.

[00:14:52]No, no, no, no, it's No, no, because I mean, these are But these are these are the very ideas that come out of this and I and I think what's very intriguing about all this and I go back to my point about as as the Romans move their frontiers east east north and west, of course, they become more aware of the challenges and in the sense there's an audacity going on in Augustus's brain. They say, "Well, it took like, you know, what, 10 years to conquer Gaul. We can do, you know, we can cover it in so many years." And then you'll see, for example, comments in I think it's um Pliny the Elder and he's trying to describe the sizes of land masses and he and he basically says I think that if you look at the Orbis Terrarum which is the the document or the map that Agrippa's Freedman had put together the world, he got the dimensions of Germania wrong. It was way bigger than he ever imagined it was and therefore any calculations as to conquest must needs be wrong. So so you'd look at Germania and say, well, we think it's this big which is about the size of Gaul but it isn't. It's multiple times bigger than Gaul. So they would have approached their planning and campaigning on a flawed assumption and they would have said, well, look, the Germans that we know are these kinds of people and they're good at this and good at that and you know, good good discipline and better equipment and and all rest of it will defeat them. Well, of course, they're talking about the Rhineland tribes mainly and what's very interesting to your point uh Murray is the fact that what came out of Julius Caesar's invasions if you will or explorations whichever they were was a better handle on the at the Suebi but they made an ally of the Ubii and the Ubii was sort of as as Celtic as you could probably get in a tribe and they were very predisposed and in the text you get the impression they're quite sophisticated.

[00:16:38]They like to trade and they do very well and eventually they are they merge into the Roman Empire and they become a nation at Oppidum Ubiorum ironically.

[00:16:48]They're also of the of the Ubii. But but my point is this is that they they had grossly underestimated it seems all the points you've just made yourself which is to say there's not a lot there when you get there other than trees, forests, rivers and farms.

[00:17:03]Yes, they can do mining. Yes, they can make metal work and steel but there's no urban infrastructure there. We have to build everything and that makes it doubly hard. So not knowing how big it is, not finding much there when you get there and and of it on you to turn it into something that you recognize as a province. And um you know, for for a variety of different reasons, they never make it happen. They never make it happen.

[00:17:26]>> It's also the manpower that's there. I mean, it's like latent manpower that if you compare it to the What is it?

[00:17:32]300,000 roughly that you're talking about in terms of the Roman legions across the empire at that stage versus the something in the vicinity of 550,000 able-bodied men in just the probably as you're saying more the Rhineland Germania and Central Germania, not the entire thing. They're taking on something that they just don't necessarily appreciate the the scale that they're they Even though they're as you say, there's no urban uh settlements, and they might be vastly spread out in terms of how they are organized as a society, but get them together, what you're going to face is not maybe what they're looking at on the tin. I I just want to make that He makes an excellent point there, Mark. It is the fact that when you look at the sort of casualties or captives that Caesar takes, they're measured in the hundreds of thousands.

[00:18:25]Now, are they exaggerations? Probably.

[00:18:27]But, the point is they're vast numbers.

[00:18:30]So, you could always say that that these these mercenary armies coming across the Rhine and the Moselle, even if it's a fraction of this, are large numbers of armed troops. That remains right through until, you know, the Gothic invasions of the 4th century AD that the numbers of the people coming across the Rhine and the Danube are incomprehensible.

[00:18:50]And probably they're all exaggerated.

[00:18:52]But, that's nothing new. And I think it's part of the framework of how you you pose the threat. You know, I think the only number that we get given for the Cimbri is 300,000. And that doesn't include the the the Teutones or the other tribes in that in that sort of confederation. And that's the point I wanted to make is that the Roman terminology and understanding of these tribes isn't sufficient. They don't understand confederations. They don't understand how can you all be the same tribe?

[00:19:26]How can you have seven kings in in your one tribe? Surely you have a king.

[00:19:32]And so you're like, "Well, are they even kings? Do they use that terminology?

[00:19:36]You're You're using Rex, but are they using Rex?"

[00:19:40]And that's where you start to get the sort of like Latinization of of tribal terminology, which is sort of the Romans grasping for understanding of Wait, what? What are you? You're You're a subtribe of them and are related to them and you can see that in, you know, ethnographical treatises like Tacitus's Germania and things like that, trying to and even Pliny the Elder trying to understand it. Because it's not urban.

[00:20:07]It's not civilized. It's barbarian uh from their perspective. They're not You know, how can you just live in a forest?

[00:20:15]The vast forest with hundreds of thousands of people without a city.

[00:20:21]But But really what you're saying is that they don't understand anything.

[00:20:25]They don't understand the geography, the the size. I mean, the descriptions of of where these people live, you know, it's all like it's forest and mountains and wild and you know, the Batavians are supposed to live in the mountains near the near the ocean near the ocean. I can tell you one thing, as you all know, where the Batavians used to live not very mountainous. And And the terrain is something that the Romans just was was an enemy of the Romans just as much. There weren't as many towns for the Romans to threaten. The Germans could always retreat further uh uh away from the Romans as they marched. Uh and also the dense forests, the the the dense forests that hadn't been touched by, you know, acts or ever farmed, that was very difficult to fight over.

[00:21:17]And again and again you see that the Romans had difficulty moving legions through the kind of terrain that hadn't ever been altered from its primordial state.

[00:21:30]So Germania was Barbaricum, you know, in the truest sense of of the word. And with large populations. So they they preferred to farm in smaller communities, but they also had large numbers of people. I think it's a story because it highlights something. Caesar effectively is the man who names and brands and defines this thing called Germania.

[00:21:53]And what it means is because he sort of contrived this thing, this confection of nations that in a vast sort of primitive landscape where it's dark and it's raining and it's cold. Means they're chasing ghosts.

[00:22:05]When they finally get there, they're they're really not prepared for what they face. And and I think always the Roman Empire really never does a good job of that. But someone actually created this thing and enough people were suckered in by his propaganda that they started calling it that. Well, it's interesting, you know, and it's the 80s AD where you finally get this concept of conquest by the road building into Germania. And so, you know, you get the under dimension, you get the idea that they build 120 Roman miles of road into Germany.

[00:22:42]That those therefore expose more of Germania to Roman civilization because they can march into the heartland sort of thing. Which again is a misconception cuz 120 km or 120 Roman miles over the Rhine is not really anywhere They're to the heartland. But to the German to the to the Roman mind, that was like, yeah, we're we're on the doorstep of their capital city.

[00:23:07]>> Well, before that, of course, they've been using rivers very effectively to reach far further into Germany.

[00:23:13]Well, even to even to circumnavigate it, you know, you get the the the the periplus of the Baltic and things like that and, you know, searches for um all sorts of mythical places in that period in the first century BC.

[00:23:27]It it it it it is absolutely fascinating that because they they they committed Augustus committed something like a third of the available Roman army to this project.

[00:23:38]And, you know, as we'll discuss in the next edition of the podcast, the campaign was pretty sound.

[00:23:44]And it and and the way I've in writing my current book is I I use a sort of an American military theory which explains how a how war is fought and there are phases and so forth and they they they they work it pretty well over the first 20 years and then it goes horribly wrong for reasons we'll discuss. But but the point is they might have anticipated that had they done their homework better 20 years before.

[00:24:07]And I think that um you know, the the the put the political desire to to try and capture and Romanize this this really large landscape over there was probably very seductive to someone like Augustus who was looking for something to be able and again his his his ongoing continuing relationship with the with the Senate was he kept his army and he kept his province as long as there were wars or revolts or there was, you know, there were needs for for that kind of activity there. When that activity stopped, he was supposed to hand those provinces back to the Senate. And it was a really interesting game that he plays over over a number of years and he he never lets the army go as a result. So, he he has to make war in order to be able to secure his hand on the Roman Republic. And the remarkable thing about, you know, a third of the Roman army being on the Rhine, when does that stop? That's That's where a third of the Roman army remains for centuries. A, they're not defeated. B, they stay undefeated and stay crossing and raiding the Rhine into the fourth century. You know, you've got you've got when the Goths invade the Eastern Empire in 376, the Alamanni are invading the Western Empire at the same time. So, this idea of Germanic tribes crossing the Rhine willy-nilly when they feel like it. Hang on, we had an agreement. Well, you know, that wasn't us. That was That was the Alamanni commanded by this other guy.

[00:25:33]But But you're the Alamanni. Yeah, but we're not the same. But you're the same.

[00:25:36]Well, you don't understand. That never leaves the sort of the Roman mindset that they actually don't have any idea who they're dealing with. But, you know, they will they will take advantage of them. All the the Batavians remain a, you know, a a manpower resource for for centuries. Just a few, and then they're gone. I mean, there's units with that name, but they're not Batavian anymore.

[00:25:59]Well, that's the tricky thing, isn't it?

[00:26:00]It's cuz they're, you know, again at the end of the fourth century they >> fourth century.

[00:26:04]They're still called Batavians and northern Germans. So, and they're still named Batavi The Batavia is still named in the Notitia, and there's lots of them. There's a seniores and a juniores in each half of the empire. So, you're like, are you Batavian? No, you're you're clearly not, but there must be some. I think there's some manuscriptural evidence at least in the third century that is still coming from that homeland. And yet they're supposed to have their origin with the the Chatti or the Catti, whichever way you want to put it.

[00:26:31]So, so they're sort of like a middle Rhine tribe that makes its way over there. And Again, I think what what's fascinating is what we always have to lean on these rather dubious sources, and and they're created to explain the inexplicable. And and and as I was doing my research for my current book, it was interesting that, you You they start off knowing about five tribes, and then maybe their own 10 tribes and then they start calling like you said juniors and seniors. So they're trying to do what Romans do. They're trying to organize chaos into a world of order which enables them to control it. And I think what they're not able to do is that these people won't let themselves be controlled and they're probably not even called by the names the Romans would call them. Well, yeah, I mean the the the the morphing of the tribe names, the convenient that the Tutones disappear, the some of these other tribes disappear but then they start getting used and the the problem is >> disappears. Yes, the people doesn't but but they, you know, the the the tracing that the Catti become the the this then, you know, that becomes this and then it's like, well, that's you're calling them that. I don't know that they necessarily would say we changed or we we we shifted. But the from the Roman perspective trying to label even today when you look at a map of where are these where is this people located, you can get 10 maps from 10 different books and they will all be different about where this particular tribe is specifically like vaguely, yes, but where they overlap. And even on modern maps, you know, the the the boundaries and we love boundaries. We love borders and the Rhine's great cuz the Rhine's a great border. But when you look at some of these maps of where these tribes are, we have no idea where their borders are.

[00:28:14]And so you get either shifting or you get sort of like a This is a shared border between this tribe and this tribe. And you're like, really?

[00:28:25]And often you'll find as I'll just mention but in the Hercynian forest, the the the Cherusci think of this as their border and this is okay, so that's the Black Forest. So that's kind of there and then you sort of put those people in and then you'll find now the Sugambri don't exist anymore. Those people moved into their space. Really? You know, so you're absolutely right and I think that anybody looking at maps has to be very aware that these are our best interpretations of some often dubious and often contradictory things. And again, you have to understand that Florus that I quoted is what 50 or 100 years separated from the events we're describing, right?

[00:29:00]And then we've mentioned Tacitus in this conversation, who was as many years as well, who never went there. And it's quite interesting when you compare, for example, what Tacitus says about Germania and what Pliny the Elder, who actually was there, he was actually a prefect in in in a Was it a cavalry unit? So So, you know, you you you've got informed opinion or uninformed ignorance and shades in between. And and and sometimes it's very hard to tell them apart. But it makes you wonder what kind of preparation was made in general for these campaigns.

[00:29:31]I mean, the Caesar goes into Gaul at lightning speed, which suggests that there isn't a long prepa- period of preparation in in But there is perhaps enough known about where he's going, at least about the near areas, because of course the at least the southern coastal strip where all the rich people like to have their vacation now. Uh at least that used to be a a very >> then well-known spot. Yeah, exactly. And there was contact, there were merchants, and there were probably some reconnaissance people might have gone in deeper into what is now France.

[00:30:11]The merchant thing is the the key, really, isn't it? It's the business aspect of the Romans are, at the end of the day, if they're expanding, they're looking to expand for a business reason, to make money out of it, to raise taxes, to secure trade links, etc. And in terms of Caesar going into Gaul, as you say, those links are already there. The links are already up to, you know, up to the the channel in Britannia. In terms of going into Germania, those trade links are a little bit more wishy-washy. There's They don't The Romans don't have necessarily have the presence that they had amongst the Gauls previously. And at the same time you sort of mentioned already that those legions, when they go into Germania, they stay there on that on that Rhine frontier for centuries. And yet, if you talk about one legion that maybe at the start of the of the Imperial times is costing something in the vicinity of like 11 million sesterces a year to run one legion. And you've got three of them or four of them deployed on the Rhine frontier.

[00:31:17]Germania never makes that kind of money ever in terms of what the Romans are getting out of it. And yet, they persist with it. They are basically bankrolling this entire frontier with other activities around the empire. I think that just gives a little bit of an It's an interesting perspective that the Romans persist with this idea that they have to take on this barbarian landscape even though it's costing them. It's not like every other province actually making them something or at least it's got you know, having the prospect of making something. That's of course one of the reasons why Britain remains occupied by three legions. It is cost-effective. Three legions in Britain were still making money. We're not leaving until they leave.

[00:32:05]But so my point was and all those observations are first class by the way is it's try and understand at this point what Caesar really is prepared as he was. I think again, we have the benefit of hindsight. We know what happened over the eight years, you know, the 50, we know what he's doing. He's crossing the Rubicon.

[00:32:21]But in the year before, if you think it you go all the way back to what is it?

[00:32:24]58 when he's now the the procurator or whatever of of of Gaul or it actually it's it's Gallia Cisalpina and Illyricum.

[00:32:34]And you You he's got What has he got?

[00:32:36]He's got three legions, four legions, something like that. He then goes and recruits some more. Right? So, he can specifically fight the uh Helvetii. And that's so so all of Julius Caesar's campaigning seems to have been deal with this thing and then start chasing them and we'll chase them and we'll chase them. So so so I don't know that I'm going to be controversial. I don't think there's a grand strategy in what Caesar starts out to do.

[00:32:59]What he looks upon doing is I'm going to nip these people and going to uh the Helvetii from coming into Roman territory, my territory. And I'm going to sort of really appeal to people's memory of the Cimbri and Teutones that these are a real threat to our possessions. And I'm going to actually deal it and I'm going to obliterate these people. I need lots of resources.

[00:33:17]The Senate gives him the resources. So, by the time he's finished his campaign, how many does he got? About 10 legions to me? It's a large >> 11 at one stage. So so you know, he didn't start out saying I want 11 legions. He had his four or six or whatever it was and he adds to them and he makes the uh rationale clear to the Senate who go along with the story until the Senate starts to have I don't know.

[00:33:38]Hold on. I think you're going outside your remit here.

[00:33:41]So, it it in in the difference I'm trying to get to is that Augustus by now has what? 28 legions? They are going to be paid for one way or the other cuz he's in the sixth is 60 AD he he sets up a military treasury and there's taxation and there's his money paying for all of this. The army is effectively paid for. He's got to find a use for them.

[00:34:03]And I think what's very useful is that now we've got the the western Balkans sorted out in Illyricum is dealt with and the Spain Iberian Peninsula and the east, there's not many places you can go to deploy an active army.

[00:34:16]And where Caesar had conquest a plenty in Gaul until he didn't, Augustus has to go create the things I come back to my original point. He needs to have military action to justify him holding onto power. I'm going to throw a spanner in your works about the whole, you know, trade networks not existing because one of the fascinating aspects of trade through and beyond Germany, and it seems to be a river-borne trade rather than a coastal trade, and that's the amber trade from the Baltic. That the evidence of amber in the Mediterranean and in Italy and a desire for amber and how, you know, how um covetous people are of amber items for a long period. And so, the idea that there are tradesmen who journey down the the Rhine, down the Elbe, and get to the Baltic and bring amber back to Rome in enough quantity to make it desirable, that surely these people know what they're talking about. Why Why aren't you asking them? Um, you know, Nero, uh the last book of Pliny's Natural History is this campaign, a knight still living, but he refuses to name him, which is the peculiar way that Pliny sort of introduces him. He's sent with some of Nero's German bodyguards to the Baltic to bring back amber so he can decorate the amphitheater completely in amber.

[00:35:39]There are networks that exist, and they seem to to not use them.

[00:35:44]And and slavery, of course. You know, slavery famous at Carnuntum, wasn't there a gladiator school, something? A lot of the people going there were actually German slaves brought, presumably traded by other Germans. It's almost as if there is this network that they just ignore. That Why aren't you using them as a source for how vast this place is, what, you know, what languages are spoken, what cultural institutions exist? Where are they?

[00:36:10]>> [laughter] >> Where's this Where's their capital city or where's their market town? And sort of they don't, for whatever reason, they don't take advantage of those in the way that they do in other other regions. And yet, if you look at Ptolemy, the Geography, it's very clear that there were places with names. Now, did Ptolemy invent it? I don't think so.

[00:36:30]You know, you look at the the tables that he creates with all the various navigational What do they call those things?

[00:36:37]Geographical positions. Is there are 10, 20, 30 different names? They're all very grand-sounding names. Are these just villages? Are these little townships? I mean, we know that, for example, Mattium was one one town cuz the Romans stormed it and that was a German town. I forget whether it's I think it's the Catti. I think it's the Catti that that actually have that place. So, I don't know whether it actually was devoid of townships. So, I if I go by Ptolemy.

[00:37:04]Ptolemy has precise locations, you know, for lack of a better term, like latitude and longitude. Which I believe you can extrapolate for known cities. Like he gives you a latitude and a longitude for Rome and it's it's inaccurate based on our understanding, but based on Ptolemy's, it's bang on. So, you can actually go, "Okay, so if you say that for this for this location that we do know, here's another location which we don't know, but you give us an exact location for it, surely we can extrapolate out that that therefore must be this."

[00:37:37]And it may well be forest or farmland today, but according to Ptolemy, at some point it was a civic center. He's digging out his copy of Ptolemy, I think. In fact, there's actually a book He is, indeed.

[00:37:51][laughter] There is actually a book which is actually uh by a whole bunch of different people who including but led by Andreas Kleineberg and Christian Marx, Germania und die Inseln Thule, which exactly takes >> [snorts] >> what you've just said, takes all the coordinates in Ptolemy and imposes them as if actually the origins of a lot of smaller German towns as well so are actually are actually Germanic. I'm glad I predicted that work ahead of time.

[00:38:18]Yeah, they had a big they had a book launch about sort of 6 years ago, but you know, I I think it it's it's very difficult because again, everything that we know about them uh these diverse peoples uh comes through a a number of ancient Roman Romanized Greek eyes.

[00:38:34]Uh and they have a particular understanding what barbarism is, which they impose on these people. So, there are some tropes that are working here as well. And it's >> [laughter] >> Yeah.

[00:38:45]So, it serves for them a a particular purpose to be able to make these people look definitely worse than we are. So, our mission is like a civilizing mission, you know, it's it's it's DNA and Virgil and all that stuff, right? So, going back to Augustus, I think that he sees himself in that sort of mold. He He can turn this this huge big threat on the edge of our empire into something. And uh knowing what they know of the time and being very confident of their abilities and capabilities, uh they think it can be done given enough time. And if you take, you know, from around about sort of 17 BC up to 88, you they would have been right. They were making great progress. They were doing lots of And then 89 happens.

[00:39:32]Right? So, that's kind of where it works. So, for something like 20 years, they seem to have a a a really good strategy that the the way that we'll talk about next time, it is the way that they are able to do the things they're very good at doing.

[00:39:46]And they they do form alliances and they are able to turn some of these coalitions to their advantage. And interestingly enough, when I was when I was doing my book about uh Tiberius, when Tiberius has to effectively sign a a treaty with Maroboduus, because he's got to deal with the revolution going on in in in in Illyricum, Maroboduus deals with this trade in amber. And he's he his wealth effectively is on the back of that trade in amber. So, they coexist quite happily with the Romans as a trading commercial partner.

[00:40:15]>> I think the interesting thing about things were going really well until 88 when they stopped going well and became didn't go well in 89. The interesting thing of course is like well actually they weren't going well. You thought you were doing the right things cuz you were using a different pattern of this is the right phase of warfare. But in fact it wasn't right from the start. The alliances you were making were not reliable. These are not people who are who have your back.

[00:40:43]You have not got a good trading partner.

[00:40:45]You have not got a good alliance.

[00:40:47]They're actually looking to betray you because their cultural identity is not what you think it is.

[00:40:53]And the Roman idea of of civilization in terms of once you've made an agreement with us you're our ally you can't go back on it. No take backsies pinky swear. That's not how the Germanic tribes work.

[00:41:03]That's not how they work and you know evidence shows us that the Roman understand sorry the Roman understanding of conquest doesn't apply to Germania.

[00:41:12]And that's part of the problem and it persists from for you know centuries that they don't get how you conquer this area. So so we're going to have a really interesting conversation next time we meet. I'm just going to give the I think that the one thing that we need to bear in mind here 200 years for the Iberian Peninsula a lot of things going with the Celtiberians a lot of people up in the north of the of the country it took them 200 years to to to sort that out.

[00:41:41]Even when Augustus has sorted out Gaul it's amazing the number of times you read about a rebellion to associate it with a rebellion type associate it with a rebellion you know all those sort of things going on on an infrequent but but nevertheless happening with a with a regularity. So even when you think they're conquered they're not. Illyricum the same thing about 50 200 years to actually conquer that.

[00:42:04]So so my point I think is is that we're looking at the Augustus' conquest of Germania or at least this point of the preparations.

[00:42:13]With a very narrow time frame, I'm risk of actually saying what our president said over here recently, you know, well, in Vietnam war. And then My point is that if you take just 17, 15, 14 BC up to 8, that is not a long time in the typical time frame it takes Romans to pacify. And there are there are various phases in in the Roman conquest, aren't there? I mean, there is the there's the initial onslaught, the engagement, the cease initiative phase.

[00:42:41]And there are other phases that go on, and I think what's interesting in the case of Germania is that by the time it gets to Tiberius, he's been there many times, 11 times I think it was. And in the end he says, "I think I'm done with this. I'm happy with the treaties with the others. I am happy with the treaties with those people. We got what we want. The main thing is we go back to the Tencteri, Usipetes, and Sugambri. These were enemies number one, two, and three.

[00:43:08]And they could honorifically say, "We have single demand, we have dealt with them. They will not cause us problem again." And I know so so Augustus is able to look at where he is in all of this with some pride that just as his ancestors had dealt with Ariovistus and Marius had dealt with the the Cimbri and Teutones, you know, honor has been has been dealt with. And Germania was not the only region that the Romans decided not to try to conquer more than they already had. For example, they gave up on any dreams of controlling the entirety of Britain. That is, they built first one wall, then the Antonine Wall, and then they retreated back to Hadrian's Wall after not too long a period. Anything north of the Hadrian's Wall was just left to whatever tribes lived there. So, it seems that the Romans could say enough when it didn't seem worth the cost in either blood or treasure. But even then since you raised those two things to fix even after Antoninus Pius who's building that second wall you mentioned, along comes Severus, Septimus Severus and says I'm going to go and take it. I mean it's interesting that in Carlisle they're actually excavating under the cricket field there an immense what turns out to be an imperial bathing a bathing complex with with the liquid of MP. It all looks really really grand. I mean they had aspirations to finish the job. And and I think it's very interesting that the the analogy that I'm going to draw here is that you know, it makes him in his tracks is going into Germania. So the Romans never ever lose their interest in picking fights and taking whatever it is for whatever is is the reason for doing it.

[00:44:54]And I think again that what what you try to understand the Roman reasons for annexation and conquest is it one event?

[00:45:02]Is it a strategic imperative? And and I think it's a case-by-case basis. Uh what Murray said earlier, we're fascinated by lines on a map and we tend to interpret fortifications as such, but we can have and academics have had endless debates about whether the limes and this limes zone actually means this is where the Roman Empire ends or this is just uh uh fill in a variety of potential explanations. Whether it's just control of certain zone in or out, but there's always aspiration to the rest of the world. It's just the Romans think everything is theirs. There's some people just don't know it yet. Yeah, and the the idea of doing something that that no one's been able to do before, which is why Severus goes into Scotland.

[00:45:51]It's why Thrax goes over, you know, it's why there are permanent walls with the Parthians then the Persians. And there's almost a hang on a minute, how did you defeat the Parthians? We've been fighting the Parthians for 200 and something years, 300 years. How How did you beat them in one battle, you Persians? And then the Persians simply become the Parthians who were the Persians anyway. So, you get this sort of continuity of Akmanid Persians, Parthians who conquered the people that we couldn't conquer, and then the Persian the Sassanid Persians who conquered the Parthians. You're like, "Oh."

[00:46:22]But that that constant, you know, there's wars there into the Byzantine Empire. They interestingly don't go south again. They don't go south of the the second cataract, and they never try and conquer Arabia Felix again, which is which is interesting. That sort of Arabian campaign idea is abandoned. So, you get the eastward and the northern thrusts only, really. It's a wonderful rich history of people trying to prove what their ancestors had already proven and learning, "Oh, no, I can't conquer northern Britain. Oh, no, I can't conquer Germany."

[00:46:57]And on that bombshell, Oh, well, there you go.

[00:47:02]Apparently, we'll we'll hear the next part in a month.

[00:47:05]Thank you all very much.

[00:47:07]See you next time.