The Provinces of the Roman Empire

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1906. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. ROMAN GERMANY AND THE FREE GERMANS. The two Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Germany were the result of that defeat of the Roman Limitation of , . _^ Roman o«r- arms and ot Koman policy under the reign of Augustus which has been already (p. 60 f.) described. The original province of Germany, which embraced the country from the Rhine to the Elbe, subsisted only twenty years, from the first campaign of u. Drusus, 742 u.c., down to the battle of Varus ^ d 9 and the fall of Aliso, 762 u.c. ; but as, on the one hand, it included the military camps on the left bank of the Rhine--Vindonissa, Mogontiacum, Vetera--and, on the other hand, even after that disaster, more or less considerable portions of the right bank remained Roman, the governorship and the command were not, in a strict sense, done away by that catastrophe, although they were, so to speak, placed in suspense. The internal organisation of the Three Gauls has been already set forth ; they embraced the whole country as far as the Rhine without distinction of descent--except that the Ubii, who had only been brought over to settle in Gaul during the last crises, did not belong to the sixty-four cantons, while the Helvetii, the Triboci, and generally the districts elsewhere held in occupation by the Rhenish troops, doubtless did so belong. The intention had been to gather together the German cantons between the Rhine and Elbe into a similar association under Roman supremacy, as had been constituted in the case of the Gallic cantons, and to bestow upon it, in the altar to Augustus of the Ubian town--the germ of the modern Cologne--an executive centre similar to that which the altar of Augustus of Lyons formed for Gaul; for the more remote future the transference of the chief camp to the right bank ...