[85] The oldest dated evidence for these is two inscriptions of the garrison of Böckingen, opposite Heilbronn, on the left bank of the Neckar of the year 148 (Brambach, C. I. Rh. 1583, 1590).
[86] The oldest dated evidence for the existence of this line is the inscription of vicus Aurelii (Oehringen) of the year 169 (Brambach, C. I. Rh. 1558), doubtless only private, but certainly not set up before the construction of this fort belonging to the Miltenberg–Lorch line; little later is that of Jagsthausen, likewise belonging to that line, of the year 179 (C. I. Rh. 1618). Accordingly vicus Aurelii might take its name from Marcus, not from Caracalla, though it is attested of the latter that he constructed various forts in these regions and named them after himself (Dio, lxxvi. 13).
[87] As to the distribution of the upper German troops there is a want of sufficient information, but not entirely of data on which to rest. Of the two headquarters in upper Germany, that of Strassburg can be shown to have been after the construction of the line of the Neckar occupied but weakly, and was probably more an administrative than a military centre (Westdeutsches Correspondenzblatt, 1884, p. 132). On the other hand, the garrison of Mentz always demanded a considerable portion of the aggregate strength, all the more because it was probably the only compact body of troops on a large scale in all upper Germany. The other troops were distributed partly to the Limes, whose forts, according to Cohausen’s estimate (Röm. Grenzwall, p. 335), were on an average five miles apart from one another, and so in all about fifty; partly to the interior forts, especially on the line of the Odenwald from Gündelsheim to Wörth; that the latter, at least in part, remained occupied even after the laying out of the outer Limes, is at least probable. Owing to the inequality in size of the forts still measurable, it is difficult to say what number of troops was required to make them capable of defence. Cohausen (l.c. p. 340) reckons to a middle–sized fort, including the reserve, 720 men. As the usual cohort of the legion as of the auxiliaries numbered 500 men, and the fort–buildings must necessarily have had regard to this fact, the garrison of the fort in the event of siege must be estimated on an average at least at this number. After the reduction the upper German army could not possibly have held the forts, even of the Limes alone, simultaneously in this strength. Much less could it, even before the reduction, have kept the lines between the forts even barely occupied with its 30,000 men ([p. 119]); and, if this was not possible, the simultaneous occupation of all the forts had in fact no object. To all appearance each fort was planned in such a way that, when duly garrisoned, it could be held; but, as a rule—and on this frontier the state of peace was the rule—the individual fort was not on a war–footing, but only furnished with troops, in so far that posts might be stationed in the watch–towers, and the roads as well as the byways might be kept under inspection. The standing garrisons of the forts were, it may be conjectured, very much weaker than is usually assumed. We possess from antiquity but a single record of such a garrison; it is of the year 155, and relates to the fort of Kutlowitza, to the north of Sofia (Eph. Epigr. iv. p. 524), for which the army of lower Moesia, and in fact the 11th legion, furnished the garrison. This troop numbered at that time, besides the centurion in command, only 76 men. The Raetian army was, at least before Marcus, still less in a position to occupy extensive lines; it numbered then at the most 10,000 men, and had, besides the Raetian Limes, to supply also the line of the Danube from Ratisbon to Passau.
[88] This is proved by the document of Trajan of the year 107, found at Weissenburg.
[89] The investigations hitherto as to the Raetian Limes have but little cleared up the destination of this work; this only is made out that it was less adapted than the analogous upper German one for military occupation. A weaker frontier–bar of that sort may reasonably, even before the Marcomanian war, have been chosen to face the Hermunduri; nor does what Tacitus says of their intercourse in Augusta Vindelicum by any means exclude the existence at that time of a Raetian Limes. Only in that case we should expect that it would not end at Lorch, but would join the line of the Neckar; and in some measure it does this, inasmuch as at Lorch instead of the Limes comes the Rems, which falls into the Neckar at Canstatt.
[90] Of the seven legions which at Nero’s death were stationed in the two Germanies ([p. 132]), Vespasian broke up five; there remained the 21st and the 22d, to which, thereupon, were added the seven or eight legions introduced for the suppression of the revolt, the 1st Adiutrix, 2d Adiutrix, 6th Victrix, 8th and 10th Gemina, 11th, 13th (?), and 14th. Of these, after the close of the war, the 1st Adiutrix was sent probably to Spain ([p. 65], note), the 2d Adiutrix probably to Britain ([p. 174], note 4), the 13th Gemina (if this came to Germany at all) to Pannonia; the other seven remained, namely, in the lower province the 6th, 10th, 21st, and 22d ([p. 147], note), in the upper the 8th, 11th, and 14th. To the latter was probably added in the year 88 the 1st Adiutrix, once more sent from Spain to upper Germany ([p. 65] note). That under Trajan the 1st Adiutrix and the 11th were stationed in upper Germany is shown by the inscription of Baden–Baden (Brambach, C. I. Rh. 1666). The 8th and the 14th, it can be shown, both came with Cerialis to Germany, and both did garrison duty there for a considerable period.
[91] Traian was sent by Nerva in the year 96 or 97 as legate to Germany, probably to the upper, as at that time Vestricius Spurinna seems to have presided over the lower. Nominated here as co–regent in October of the year 97, he received the accounts of Nerva’s death and of his nomination as the Augustus in February 98 at Cologne. He may have remained there during the winter and the following summer; in the winter 98–99 he was on the Danube. The words of Eutropius, viii. 2: urbes trans Rhenum in Germania reparavit (whence the often misused notice in Orosius, vii. 12, 2, has been copied), which can only be referred to the upper province, but naturally apply not to the legate, but to the Caesar or the Augustus, obtain a confirmation through the civitas Ulpia s(altus?) N(icerini?) Lopodunum of the inscriptions. The “restoration” may stand in contrast not to the institutions of Domitian, but to the irregular germs of urban arrangements in the Decumates–land before the shifting of the military frontier. There is no indication pointing to warlike events under Trajan; that he planned and gave his name (Ammianus, xvii. 1, 11) to a castellum in Alamannorum solo—according to the connection, on the Main not far from Mentz—is as little proof of such events as the circumstance that a later poet (Sidonius, Carm. vii. 115), mixing up old and new, makes Agrippina under him the terror of the Sugambri—that is, in his sense, of the Franks.
[92] Not merely the causal connection, but even the chronological succession of these important events is obscure. The account, relatively the best, in Zosimus, i. 29, describes the Germanic war as the cause why Valerian immediately on ascending the throne in 253 made his son joint–ruler with equal rights; and Valerian bears the title Germanicus maximus as early as 256 (C. I. L. viii. 2380; likewise in 259 C. I. L. xi. 826), perhaps even if the coin in Cohen, n. 54, is to be trusted, the title Germanicus maximus ter.
[93] That the Germans, against whom Gallienus had to fight, are to be sought at least chiefly on the lower Rhine, is shown by the residence of his son in Agrippina, where he can only have remained behind as nominal representative of his father. His biographer also, c. 8, names the Franks.
[94] It is difficult to form a conception of the degree of historical falsification which prevails in a portion of the Imperial Biographies; it will not be amiss to present here a specimen of it in the account of Postumus. He is here called (no doubt in an inserted document) Iulius Postumus (Tyr. 6), on the coins and inscriptions M. Cassianius Latinius Postumus, in the epitomised Victor, 32, Cassius Labienus Postumus.—He reigns seven years (Gall. 4); Tyr. 3, 5; the coins name his tr. p. X., and Eutropius, ix. 10, gives him ten years.—His opponent is called Lollianus, according to the coins Ulpius Cornelius Laelianus, Laelianus in Eutropius ix. 9 (according to the one class of manuscripts, while the other follows the interpolation of the biographers) and in Victor (c. 33), Aelianus in the epitome of Victor.—Postumus and Victorinus rule jointly according to the biographer; but there are no coins common to both, and consequently these confirm the report in Victor and Eutropius that Victorinus was the successor of Postumus.—It is a peculiarity of this class of falsifications that they reach their culmination in the documents inserted. The Cologne epitaph of the two Victorini (Tyr. 7), hic duo Victorini tyranni (!) siti sunt criticises itself. The alleged commission of Valerian, whereby the latter communicates to the Gauls the nomination of Postumus, not only praises prophetically the gifts of Postumus as a ruler, but names also various impossible offices; a Transrhenani limitis dux et Galliae praeses at no time existed, and Postumus ἀρχὴν ἐν Κελτοῖς στρατιωτῶν ἐμπεπιστευμένος (Zosimus, i. 38) can only have been praeses of one of the two Germanies, or, if his command was an extraordinary one, dux per Germanias. Equally impossible is, in the same quasi–document, the tribunatus Vocontiorum of the son, an evident imitation of the tribunates, as they emerge in the Notitia Dign. of the time of Honorius.—Against Postumus and Victorinus, under whom the Gauls and the Franks fight, Gallienus marches with Aureolus, afterwards his opponent, and the later emperor Claudius; he himself is wounded by a shot from an arrow, but is victorious, without any change being produced by the victory. Of this war the other accounts know nothing. Postumus falls in the military insurrection instigated by the so–called Lollianus, while according to the report in Victor and Eutropius, Postumus becomes master of this Mentz insurrection, but then the soldiers kill him because he will not deliver up Mentz to them for plunder. As to the elevation of Postumus, by the side of the narrative which agrees in the main with the ordinary one, that Postumus had perfidiously set aside the son of Gallienus entrusted to his guardianship, stands another evidently invented to clear him, according to which the people in Gaul did this, and then offered the crown to Postumus. The tendency to eulogise one who had spared Gaul the fate of the Danubian lands and of Asia and had saved it from the Germans, comes here and everywhere (most obviously at Tyr. 5) to light; with which is connected the fact that this report knows nothing of the loss of the right bank of the Rhine and of the expeditions of the Franks to Gaul, Spain, and Africa. It is further significant that the alleged progenitor of the Constantinian house is here provided with an honourable secondary part. This narrative, not confused but thoroughly falsified, must be completely set aside; the reports on the one hand in Zosimus, on the other in the Latins drawing from a common source—Victor and Eutropius, short and confused as they are, can alone be taken into account.