The Frontiers of the Roman Empire by David J. Breeze

Author:David J. Breeze [Breeze, David J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781848849082
Google: qbbNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 23103430
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2011-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Discussion

The histories of each of the river frontiers were different. From the time of Augustus, possibly before, legions were based on the Rhine waiting to move forward. The units in the Danube provinces tended to be deployed internally, but had moved up to the river by the late first century. On the Euphrates the situation was different again with the legions lying astride potential invasion routes and therefore in essentially defensive positions. Gradually units were spread out along the river frontiers and, as the decades passed, the number of such units increased.

By the late second century, every frontier province in Europe from the North Sea to the Black Sea contained at least one legion, in addition to many auxiliary units. The legions were generally placed strategically, to control routes used by the army, river crossings or potential invasion routes. The auxiliary units were spread along the rivers. In some areas, such as along the long stretch of the Danube through Lower Pannonia facing the Great Hungarian Plain, the forts were more or less equally placed, about a day’s march apart, that is 22km (14 miles), elsewhere their locations related closely to the local terrain. The control of routes remained important for the disposition of the auxiliary units. It can be no coincidence that the cavalry units based in Lower Germany lay to each side of the legion which itself was strategically placed at the start of one of the major routes into Germany, or that one of the two cavalry units in Upper Germany lay on another route into Germany. The same held for the frontier on the Euphrates: each main line of movement over the border was controlled by a legion.

The act of distributing forts along the rivers was a long process. It can be most closely observed in Europe. Here, it started after the Varus disaster of 9, received an impetus as the two-legion fortresses were broken up and as a result of the proactive, but restricted, expansionist policy of Claudius which had a knock-on effect on other frontiers. The wars of 68–70 led to further movement, though it is difficult to know whether the transfer of the units based in the interior of provinces up to the Rhine and the Danube was linked to those events. Building in stone, which mainly started under Trajan, helped to solidify the current positions.

Few fortlets and towers have been noted on the river frontiers in Europe, in spite of the appearance of towers on Trajan’s Column apparently placed on the bank of the Danube and the inscriptions of Commodus in Lower Pannonia. Fortlets appear on the Middle Danube under Tiberius and towers on the Lower Rhine under Claudius but generally they are found in isolated groups. While it is possible that they were only placed in locations where they were required rather than in a more patterned formation as on the artificial frontiers, it is more likely that others await discovery, or have been destroyed by the movement of the river.

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