The German people of antiquity stand out as Rome’s greatest adversary. Caesar never tried to conquer them, content to have them on the other side of the Rhine from his Gaul. Augustus designed a boundary to contain them using the natural boundaries of the Rhine and Danube rivers. After Drusus and Tiberius, Augustus’ stepsons, set up the southern boundary on the Danube in 15 B.C, Augustus put in place a plan to move the eastern boundary to the Weser river. Drusus accomplished that positioning by 11 B.C. and then pushed on to the Elbe in 9 B.C, before his death after falling off a horse. By the end of his life, and not long after the Teutoburg disaster, Augustus pulled the western boundary back to the Rhine and counseled Tiberius to leave it there.
You are viewing a single comment's thread from: