[17] Tacitus, Ann., I, 56: “positoque castello super vestigia paterni praesidii in monte Tauno.” This is probably the same fort which Dio (54, 36, 3) describes as “among the Chatti beside the Rhine”; (cf. Koepp, op. cit., p. 20). The location is generally thought to be not far from Höchst, only a few miles up the Main. A castellum here would merely command the entrance to a road into the interior; it would be no “Zwingburg.”
[18] Kornemann (Klio, IX, 1909, p. 436) regards the words of Tacitus, Ann., IV, 72: “haud spernanda illic civium sociorumque manus litora Oceani praesidebat,” as proving that “das Kastell eine starke Besatzung hatte.” On the other hand the inability of the garrison to do more than hold the fort against the uprising (IV, 73) would indicate that the force was rather small. A Roman fort was an easy thing to protect against the Germans; even the feeble garrison of Aliso held out easily against great numbers after the disaster to Varus (cf. Delbrück, Gesch. d. Kriegskunst, 2nd ed., 1909, II, p. 138). That Flevum was not established until the time of Germanicus, Kornemann (loc. cit., p. 437) has argued, in refusing to accept the plausible identification of Drusus’ naval base with Flevum, and locating Borma (Florus, II, 30, 26, a form which he very properly defends) between the Cannanefates and the Frisii (loc. cit., pp. 430 ff., especially 437-8). Our argument is not seriously affected thereby, for Borma must have been yet closer to the Rhine than Flevum (Kornemann, loc. cit., p. 437), and neither was so situated as to be a far flung outpost designed to hold conquests fast. At the very most they were merely starting points for hostile or commercial activity. To be sure, if Borma could be identified with the modern Borkum, as has been frequently attempted (cf. Kornemann, loc. cit., p. 433, n. 1), its foundation might, with a certain degree of plausibility, be regarded as a serious move looking towards conquest, but Kornemann’s localization of Borma seems unassailable, the philological obstacles are great, and the military difficulty of setting a naval base at this period so far away from the Rhine quite insuperable.
[19] Velleius, II, 105, 3. Dio indeed (56, 18, 2) speaks of the Roman soldiers in Varus’ time as “spending the winter in Germany”. The tense used, however, the imperfect, at the head of a series of the same tenses which are used in the inceptive sense, shows clearly that the word means no more than: “were beginning to spend the winter.” A single instance would be sufficient justification for the expression.
[20] This is generally changed, following Lipsius, to caput Lupiae, and is identified with Aliso. If Aliso be at Haltern it is strange indeed that he did not move on to the Rhine; if near Paderborn there is good reason for his having remained at a depot of supplies fully 90 miles away from Vetera.
[21] Ritterling (op. cit., p. 181) suggests the possibility that these “hiberna” are the same as those that were occupied the preceding winter, while others speak without reserve of a second winter in Germany (e. g., Gardthausen, Augustus, I, p. 1168). But Velleius uses “reduxit”, which distinctly implies that the legions were being led back across the Rhine. Besides, “in hiberna reducere” was a phrase which any one acquainted with the conduct of the German wars would at once understand as implying the recrossing of the Rhine. For “hiberna” alone as meaning the Rhine forts, see Velleius, II, 120, 3: “ad inferiora hiberna”; see also §2 of the same chapter: “in hiberna revertitur”, of the campaign of Tiberius in 10 A. D., where there is no doubt that the Rhine forts are meant (see Zonaras, 10, 37 ex.). Compare also Tacitus, Ann., I, 38: “reduxit in hiberna”; ibidem, I, 51: “miles in hibernis locatur”; II, 23: “legionum aliae ... in hibernacula remissae”; and II, 26, “reductus inde in hiberna miles”; and finally, Dio, 55, 2, 1, where Tiberius with the corpse of Drusus comes from the interior of Germany “as far as to the winter camp”, i. e., across the Rhine. It is clear that “hiberna” or the equivalent, when used without a special qualifying phrase, as in Velleius II, 107, 3, means the Rhine forts and nothing else. In order to make clear that these “hiberna” were in the interior of Germany it would have been necessary to add some special note calling attention to that fact. Finally, as the spending of the preceding winter in Germany is told with such a flourish (“in cuius mediis finibus ... princeps locaverat”), the repetition of the same deed, as enhancing its significance, could not have failed to be emphasized.
[22] The most important was certainly the fossa Drusiana which led from the Rhine to the North Sea, through a lake, probably that of Flevum (Tacitus, Ann., II, 8). This may very well be identical with the fossae Drusinae (Suetonius, Claud., 1). Drusus also did some work to regulate the course of the Rhine (Tacitus, Ann., XIII, 53, and Hist., V, 19). Whether he built corduroy roads (pontes longi) over the swampy land is not so certain, though Becker, Domaszewski, and Kornemann (the references in Kornemann, Klio, IX, p. 432 ff.) are probably correct when they interpret pontibus (Floras, II, 30, 26) in this sense. If this was actually a coast road connecting two naval bases, Borma, a short distance from the Rhine, with Gesoriacum-Bononia (Boulogne-sur-mer), as Kornemann very plausibly argues (p. 432, 435), then it really connected only such naval bases as were necessary to hold the mouth of the Rhine with the general military road system of Gaul. Of course both banks of a river at its mouth must be seized in order to insure certain control, but neither the establishment of Borma nor the construction of this particular bit of road can properly be regarded as measures which necessarily had the conquest of Germany in mind, nor would they have furthered very materially such a conquest, even if it had been intended. Professor Frank (Roman Imperialism, New York, 1914, p. 352) seems to make too much of this canal of Drusus as evidence “that serious measures were planned from the first”. The Romans unquestionably made preparations to march into Germany and to support armies upon such excursions; the critical consideration, however, is what they did after entering the country, not their preliminary preparations. If they constantly marched out again every fall, it is impossible to speak of permanent occupation. Nor is it satisfactory to restrict the attempts at conquest to the campaigns of Drusus, 12-9 B. C., and of Tiberius, 4-5 A. D., alone. Domitius penetrated deeper into Germany than either of them, as he alone crossed the Elbe. If some invasions imply conquest then all should, or else Augustus was guilty of an incredibly shilly-shally policy. And if all the invasions aimed at conquest, then there is an absurd disparity between their number, scale, and extent and the utterly negligible results obtained. Kornemann’s view (p. 440 ff.) that Drusus constructed a coast road as far as the mouth of the Ems can hardly be established by the evidence which he presents. It does not appear how any number of campaigns along the coast could have accomplished the conquest of the remote interior. Even if the view be accepted, however, it could only show the importance of the control of the coast, a circumstance to which we shall revert later.
[23] For the literature on these see Gardthausen, Augustus, II, p. 763 f. Nothing definite is known about them. If very significant for the “conquest” of Germany, why was their construction deferred to the period of Domitius, years after Drusus and Tiberius had been engaged in carrying on the most extensive campaigns? The very fact that these early incursions into Germany had been repeatedly made without the erection of any elaborate network of solidly constructed roads, is the clearest evidence that no permanent occupation of the country was intended. For the purposes of the occasional demonstration mere “war-paths”, supplemented here and there with some light, temporary construction were entirely adequate. It is a striking fact that of permanent road construction not a trace has been found in Germany, not in the lower Lippe valley, where, if anywhere, the highways of armies must have been solidly constructed if Germany was to be held as a province, nor even before the very gates of the camp at Haltern (cf. Koepp, Die Römer in Deutschland, 2nd ed., p. 136). Yet along the limes roads were regularly constructed, and were an essential part of the system of defense. Tiberius seems to have begun a limes in the silva Caesia, but not to have completed it (Tacitus, Ann., I, 50: “limitemque a Tiberio coeptum”). It was obviously a slight undertaking.
[24] Tacitus, Ann., II, 7. These were probably roads (Delbrück, Gesch. d. Kriegskunst, 2nd ed., p. 128 ff.). The use of “novis” indicates that such structures had been erected earlier. Their flimsy nature is to be inferred from the fact that the work had to be repeated in a few years, and the construction of Germanicus was doubtless no more lasting ([see the preceding note]).
[25] As for example Agrippa’s system of roads for Gaul. Yet Gaul needed them far less than Germany, for it was a relatively civilized country with means of rapid communication. Caesar seems to have been embarrassed but little in his campaigns by poor roads, in sharp contrast with the conditions prevailing in Germany.
[26] Dio (56, 18, 2) states that “their (i. e. Roman) soldiers were beginning to winter there and were founding cities”, but just what these “cities” were, he neglects to say, and they appear nowhere else either in his narrative, or in that of any other ancient writer; yet the destruction of such incipient “cities” after the defeat of Varus is just the sort of event that could not possibly have been passed over in silence by all our sources. When Dio comes to the appropriate section in his later narrative (22, 2ᵃ = Zonaras) where these should be mentioned, he speaks of nothing but “forts” (ἐρύματα). It is perfectly clear that his sources knew nothing about real “cities”, and that from his knowledge of the way in which settlements grow up about any army post however small, he is indulging in a little exaggeration in telling of the foundation of “cities” so as to give the desired background for his picture of a complete reversal of conditions in Germany.