1 / ROMAN GERMANY

In 12 B.C., the Romans under Augustus set out to conquer Ger-
mania between the Rhine, the eastern border of Gallia (Gaul or
modern France), and the Elbe, which with the Danube was to
have provided the new natural boundary of the empire in north-
ern and eastern Europe. Twenty years later the all-but-pacified
province of Germania was lost in a sudden uprising that began
in A.D. 9 with the ambush and annihilation of a Roman army in
the Battle of Teutoburg Forest; of the Roman outposts east of the
Rhine, only Aliso on the Lippe was not immediately over-
whelmed. Augustus permitted no attempt to restore the province,
but on succeeding him as emperor in A.D. 14, Tiberius did. How-
ever, the cumulative costs of the inconclusive campaigns of A.D.
14-16 convinced him to settle for a Rhine-Danube rather than an
Elbe-Danube frontier. West of the Rhine the two border prov-
inces of Germania Superior and Germania Inferior (upper and
lower Germany) were established. From late in the first century
until the barbarian invasions of the third, Germania Superior
and the neighboring province of Raetia were extended
northeastward to include the Agri Decumates, the Tithe Lands,
a district bounded by the Rhine, the Danube, and the three-hun-
dred-mile fortified Roman frontier between them, the limes.

There is also imprecision in the use of Germanic and Ger-
man. The latter term has become closely associated with the
modern conception of national identity that has arisen only
within the past two centuries. Thus nineteenth-century French
and German nationalists debated whether Charles the Great,
the Germanic emperor crowned in Rome by the pope on Christ-
mas Day of the year 800, was "really" French or German. Un-
consciously projecting their own views back over a thousand
years, they failed to perceive that the great Frankish monarch
could not possibly have been assigned exclusively to either
camp -- and therefore could equally well be claimed as Char-
lemagne by the French and Karl der Grosse by the Germans.

As a geographical term, Germany has had different mean-
ings at different times. Roman Germany, Germania Romana,

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