In the autumn of the year 9 A.D., the Roman military was defeated in a battle at Teutoburg Forest. Around the same time, the Romans began to look for defined and stable borders. This marked a shift from acquiring land to holding land. To be sure, in small bits and pieces, efforts would be made to acquire more land after this time, but emphasis was on maintaining territory defensively rather than conquering new areas offensively.
A border was designated for the empire, running from the Rhine’s North Sea mouth to the Danube’s Black Sea mouth. The border was not a straight line. It followed the rivers for most of their lengths. Between the source of the Rhine and the source of the Danube was the limes, the Roman designation for a series of walls and fortifications which marked the border when it was not defined by a river.
The border segment from the source of the Rhine to the source of the Danube was, for most of its length, a wall. Spaced along the wall were military camps and fortifications. There were also small Roman towns and estates.
The European border of the Roman Empire was over a thousand miles long. This cannot be imagined as a heavily manned and heavily reinforced defensive military line. Much of the border would have been unmanned, remote, and desolate, especially along the rivers in their more impassable segments.
Likewise, in regions on the Roman side of the border like Noricum and Pannonia — call them colonies, provinces, territories — Romans would have been rare. Miles of forested land, dotted with the occasional Germanic village, would separate the small Roman outposts. The Romans were content to control the major trade routes in some regions, leaving the vast rural landscape to its own devices. When the Romans annexed a new province, it sometimes meant bloody battles and harsh oppression, but more often, it made very little difference to the daily lives of the ordinary residents of the region.
Historian Angus Robertson writes:
For four centuries the River Danube was the front line between the Roman Empire and the barbarians beyond. From the North Sea to the Black Sea a heavily protected border separated Roman civilization from the unknown; fortresses, walls, trenches, and encampments defended the frontier along the Roman ‘limes’. In the heart of the European continent the Roman provinces of Noricum and Pannonia bordered the Danube, from present-day Austria to Hungary and Serbia. Here the mighty river skirts the foothills of the Alps and the Pannonian Basin, the fertile, flat, open plains that stretch all the way to the Carpathian Mountains in the east.
Over the course of a century or two, these borders moved from time to time, the Romans expanding north of the Danube and east of the Rhine for a few years, then the Germanic tribes pushing them back and holding some territory west of the Rhine and south of the Danube for a few years.
The limes (a singular noun) in central Europe between the Rhine and Danube was similar to the limes between England and Scotland. The plural form of the noun is limites. The border to Scotland, of course, became known as Hadrian’s Wall.
Who were the Germanic tribes? There were no people at that time who could properly be called ‘Germans’ — it would take a few centuries for a ‘German’ cultural identity to emerge, and two millennia for a ‘German’ nation-state to appear. These people were Germanic: a host of different tribes, with related but different languages and cultures, and as likely to be enemies as allies. But they carried within themselves the chrysalis of the German culture which was yet to emerge.
In any case, they were often amiable trading partners with the Romans, yet occasionally militant opponents. Some members of Germanic tribes worked for the Romans in civilian roles or as mercenaries. There was intermarriage between Romans and Germanic people. In the provinces, many of the German people carried on their lives as normal, ignoring the Romans and being ignored by the Romans, if they happened to be in a remote and rural area.
In any case, the boundaries between the Romans and the Germanic people was not one of constant warfare, and certainly not one of a thousand-mile-long militarized front. The border existed in large part, not to define a military conflict, but rather to regulate trade: then as now, the import and export business attracted the watchful eye of government.
The border between the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes was mostly peaceful. Trade between the two groups was common. Warfare was rare. Neither side had the resources to sustain a constant state of armed aggression. The same is true of the border between the Scots and the Romans. The border apparatus was less an indicator of hostility and more a tool for regulating the flow of goods and people. As Robert Frost wrote, “good fences make good neighbors.”
