The Celtic World (Routledge Worlds)

(Barry) #1

  • Chapter Thirty-One -


Vltava valley around Prague and Pilsen and between the Yah and Morava rivers
around Bratislava, and this destruction is associated with newcomers whose cultural
affinities are with the middle and lower Elbe. These were probably the Suebic
Marcomanni and Quadi, driven out of the upper Main region by Drusus's campaigns
in 12-9 Bc,36 Similar 'German' finds in the Main valley and Thuringia are also
intrusive, since this area was previously fully integrated into the La Tene culture. On
the other hand, the German settlements at Diersheim, north-east of Strasbourg, and
elsewhere on the right bank of the Rhine are not earlier than the late Augustan
period, and were apparently established under Roman protection, perhaps for
German militiaY
The La Tene world, previously a cultural unit, was irreversibly split by Rome's
irruption into it. Once the frontier settled down along the Rhine and the Danube in
Tiberius's reign, the enormous area outside the frontier was recognized in Roman
terminology simply as 'Germany', Germania. Gaul, Raetia and Noricum became
Roman provinces and developed their distinct provincial-Roman culture. The
Taunus region, the Wetterau and the Black Forest area become a military zone along
the new frontier, which later in the first and early second centuries AD would expand
to become the province of Germania Superior. The upper Main region, Thuringia,
Bohemia and Moravia were abandoned to the incoming Germans. The lower Rhine
became a military frontier, and no attempt was ever made to reconquer the lands
between Rhine and Elbe lost in AD 9, but a buffer zone beyond the river was kept
free of settlement and reserved for military use, and we know that outposts and
taxation were maintained, at least along the Frisian coast.^38
There was, however, a great deal of trade across the frontier, as across any Roman
frontier,39 and a clear distinction can be made between the zone of frontier trade
(Grenzhandel) some 100 km wide and of long-distance trade (Fernhandel) beyond
that.^40 Pliny and Tacitus reflect a changing sense of ethnicity in their writing about
the Germans, though they seem to be puzzled by discrepancies with Caesar's
account, discrepancies which a century and a half of change makes only natural
in fluid tribal societies.^41 Archaeological evidence shows the Germans beyond the
frontier influenced to greater or lesser degrees by contact with Roman provincial
culture and trade. The so-called 'Weser-Rhein Germanen' were much influenced, the
'Elbe-Germanen' further east much less so, and different German cultural groupings
developed.^42 Roman occupation of the area between the Rhine and the Elbe from
12/9 BC to AD 9 had, however, destroyed the power of the pre-existing tribes, thus
opening up the area for the invading Germans, moving westwards up the same lines
of penetration, such as the Lippe valley and the Wetterau, which the Romans had
used in the opposite direction. The German newcomers had a great reservoir of
manpower behind them. It was because Tiberius, who knew Germany and its
peoples better than any other Roman, understood the numbers and the potential of
these newcomers that he accepted Augustus's advice to keep the empire within
its present limits,43 and never tried to regain what had been lost.
What then happened to the Celts who thus found themselves incorporated
willy-nilly into the empire and destined to become, though they did not know it,
'Gallo-Romans'? In 39/38 BC, Agrippa as governor of Gaul laid out a strategic road
system that linked all of Gaul to Lyons (Lugdunum), the main centre of Roman


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