What were the reasons why the Romans decided not venture on conquering all the lands that today are in Germany?

[twgamer20197]

Did the failure in the Teutoburg forests discourage them from invading all the Germanic lands?

[conon394]

This was recently covered see here (or go about three pages back)

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...utoburg-Forest

If you want my opinion a couple things. No particular obvious economic value. The always risk of allowing a General a great victory in the imperial system. Logistics and not just for the army but running conquest that far away w/o at least trains and making a profit out of it. I mean one legion and a few auxiliary troops from Britain could have overrun Ireland but to what end?

[hellheaven1987]

Overrunning perhaps, but occupying is another matter.

[conon394]

Overrunning perhaps, but occupying is another matter.

Population was pretty low in Ireland at the time a mix of finding elites willing to buy in and putting anyone who look sideways at a Roman on cross as a street decoration would have been enough. Problem still remains it would cost more than a feasible tax system and loot from elites that were dead could sustain. Technically the force sent would had to stay for a while that mean a whole new legion and company for Britain not cheap. I mean maybe in the 5th century when the west was collapsing somebody might have said you know looking back it be if Ireland and Scotland were Romans and not outsiders producing raiders on us. But you can see the 1-2nd century bureaucratic argument - no gain, too expensive and we can go burn them anytime they bother us.

[Roma_Victrix]

Even though they never conquered eastern Germany, the Romans still did pretty well for themselves by building entire cities, not just forts, along the huge stretch of the Rhine River. Modern cities like Cologne/Koln were originally Roman cities, as well as Mainz and Trier. The Romans not only had all of Belgium and sizable chunks of western Germany and the Netherlands, but they also controlled what is now Bavaria in the south, along with Austria and Switzerland. Given the enormous territory they had to govern, the forests of northeastern Germany weren't really that attractive economically, especially after the high price paid by Augustus when Publius Quinctilius Varus lost thousands of legionaries at Teutoburg in 9 AD. The brilliant and capable commander Germanicus Julius Caesar was able to lead a successful punitive raid of revenge against the Germanic tribes led by and allied with Arminius for that embarrassing defeat, but I don't think Germanicus had conquest in mind.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Good post from Roma, i only want to add, that also the Germanicus campaign led to the loss of 20.000-25.000 soldiers.

Kehne, Peter, "Germanicus", Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA) 11, 1998, page 444

Partial losses by the battles, partial losses by storm floods (Tacitus Annales 1, 70) or storms on the North Sea (Tacitus Annales 2, 23).

So as the Germanicus campaign was also very expensive in money and blood, a conquest of Germania was cancelled by Tiberius, as Germania magna was a economic poor region and would not have compensated the incurred costs.

[Cyclops]

1. Rome did conquer, and civilise, some regions of modern Germany.

2. Roman rule was typically based on cities, where local and imported elites were persuaded to enjoy the benefits (and shoulder the burdens) of the Roman civic system, making Roman rule self-sustaining. There was a lack of urbanisation in Germania so the Romans had to build what cities there were themselves.

3. The British and to a lesser extent Gallic provinces were a hard slog for the Romans, at least Gaul had some familiar elite tribal structures and Hellenic settlements to base rule on. Germany was another degree of difficulty harder, with more swamps, more forests and less infrastructure.

[Roma_Victrix]

Good post from Roma, i only want to add, that also the Germanicus campaign led to the loss of 20.000-25.000 soldiers.

Good point! Thanks for sharing that.

1. Rome did conquer, and civilise, some regions of modern Germany.

2. Roman rule was typically based on cities, where local and imported elites were persuaded to enjoy the benefits (and shoulder the burdens) of the Roman civic system, making Roman rule self-sustaining. There was a lack of urbanisation in Germania so the Romans had to build what cities there were themselves.

All very true.

3. The British and to a lesser extent Gallic provinces were a hard slog for the Romans, at least Gaul had some familiar elite tribal structures and Hellenic settlements to base rule on. Germany was another degree of difficulty harder, with more swamps, more forests and less infrastructure.

To emphasize this point, the colonial Greek towns and cities in southern Gaul, especially Massalia with its own navy (until it sided against Julius Caesar), were roughly as large as anything in Roman Italy. Beyond that, Gaul also had dozens of large oppidum fortified hill towns built by the native Celts, similar to the large fortified towns built by the Celtiberians in the Iberian peninsula (mostly in northern Spain, Galicia, northern Portugal, basically north and west of the Carthaginian, Greek and the first Roman settlements). The siege of Alesia, for instance, was a siege of one such fortified town. Roman forts and urban centers grew up around these original Celtic settlements and of course the Romans just built entirely new settlements like they did in Germania and Britannia, where only villages and very small towns existed beforehand.

As I pointed out in another thread I made about the fortified stone Broch round towers of ancient Scotland, the Romans seem to have even inhabited some of the Brochs after they expanded beyond Hadrian's Wall in England to build the Antonine Wall in the Lowlands of Scotland. Late Iron Age Celts/Picts were building Brochs there a bit earlier than the first Roman adventure in Britain by Julius Caesar, and were still inhabiting them when the Romans eventually invaded Scotland. The Brochs only supported small settlements, though. The fortified oppida of Gaul were much larger towns and sustained a large economy thanks to the long history of trade with the Archaic, Classical, and then Hellenistic Greeks of the Western Mediterranean, plus of course Carthage and Rome. The Gallic Celts even minted their own coins in imitation of the Mediterranean folk.

[Muizer]

Roman rule was typically based on cities, where local and imported elites were persuaded to enjoy the benefits (and shoulder the burdens) of the Roman civic system, making Roman rule self-sustaining. There was a lack of urbanisation in Germania so the Romans had to build what cities there were themselves.

This seems to have been the case but to avoid misunderstandings, in Gaul and Britannia the Romans also built pretty much all their cities from scratch. They forcibly relocated tribes wholesale to these new capitals.
But you're right there was already incipient urbanisation there, founded on arable agriculture producing surpluses of food, which in turn allowed the economy to support specialised trades. This was inherently not too far removed from the classical model of absentee land-owners using their wealth and status to rule as urban elites. In that sense, the Romans can be said to have sped up a process that had already started.

So why were the tribes of Germania different? One reason might be that the heavy German soil we consider fertile today was comparatively difficult to cultivate with available technology at the time. Whatever the reason, the economy (bit of an anachronism, but ok) was predominantly pastoral. Tribes where wealth was determined by the number of cattle owned and status by martial prowess while hunting and raiding one another were unlikely to produce city dwelling administrators.

That is why Rome eventually settled for turning tribes into clients which provided auxiliary contigents and acted as buffer for warlike tribes further afield in exchange for mony and/or at sword-point, depending on the circumstances. It worked like a charm for centuries, though eventually that policy may have proven to be a major contributor to the Empire's break up, as it helped close the developmental gap between technologically backward tribes of soldier/herdsmen of the first century AD and the kingdoms with a warrior caste capable of conquest in the 5th.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

A good example, how well developed those celtic oppida could be, is the Oppidum of Manching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum_of_Manching

The westgermanic tribes on the other hand lived in villages and were divided from the other tribes by dense forrests.

The Romans had to built in Germania everything from scratch.

Primitivity was a good defense in their case.

[hellheaven1987]

The Romans had to built in Germania everything from scratch.

Caesar's observation that Germans did not like to build permanent settlements probably is true...

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

They practiced a field / pasture acriculture, so that the field became much quicker unfertile, so that the tribes were forced to move their settlement in their territory regularly.

[Morifea]

As Carmen Sylva pointed out, there were some Oppidia in Germany:
The Rhein-Main area had many celtic settlements, most were in decline or abandoned when the romans arrived
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glauberg This one is near my current livingplace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidetrank_Oppidum Labeled as one of Europes most important Oppidias, sadly not much to find.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milseburg That one is my favourite, its close to where I grew up... Please note the position in Hesse, this one is deep in wild Germany.

Thats only a fraction of the known celtic Oppidia/Cities, more are in the area around Karlsruhe/Heidelberg if I´m correct.

[Common Soldier]

As Carmen Sylva pointed out, there were some Oppidia in Germany:
The Rhein-Main area had many celtic settlements, most were in decline or abandoned when the romans arrived
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glauberg This one is near my current livingplace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidetrank_Oppidum Labeled as one of Europes most important Oppidias, sadly not much to find.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milseburg That one is my favourite, its close to where I grew up... Please note the position in Hesse, this one is deep in wild Germany.

Thats only a fraction of the known celtic Oppidia/Cities, more are in the area around Karlsruhe/Heidelberg if I´m correct.

While Germany did have some large villages that you could consider "cities", they were not like the cities of the East or those of Italia and Spain, and they had little in them to make them worth plundering for the Romans. Romans conquest were primary driven by plunder, and compared to other regions, Germany had little economic value in plundering. The Romans did conquer those parts of Germany that were most easily defended, and the provinces of Germania helped protect the richer provinces that laid further in the interior of the empire.

Germany lacked the valuable mines that made it worth while for the Romans to conquer Britain, and even with the valuable mines of Britain in Wales and Cornwall, it seems that the value of the province of Britain was rather marginal, probably barely covered the cost of maintaining the legions there. When conditions in the empire deteriorated, the Romans just abandoned Britain as not worth the cost maintaining. Conquering the rest of Germany would have been even more of a drain, with little real gain. For the kind of agriculture the Romans practiced, Germany wasn't particularly valuable, and most of Germany laid further away from potential seaports, making transportation cost higher for any goods produced in Germany beyond the part the Romans already controlled. The Romans would have had to build a lot of infrastructure (roads, ports, cities), and the investment cost would likely be more than the profit they could expect to generate.

[Cyclops]

Edit: has anyone made the point Rome did conquer most of modern Germania under Augustus? It was not worth the Hispania/Illyria/Vietnam style manpower drain to hold at the time. I think Conon's point that Emperors wariness about giving aspiring generals large armies is very apposite too.

While Germany did have some large villages that you could consider "cities", they were not like the cities of the East or those of Italia and Spain, and they had little in them to make them worth plundering for the Romans.

I don't know of any settlements in Germania that would qualify as a civitas or poles that the Romans did not build from scratch. Were these Oppida?

Romans conquest were primary driven by plunder,

Look thats not exactly right, "glory" and prisoners were a desirable outcomes from a campaign too. Even when the republican system was decaying under the Principate Emperors like Augustus and Clau-Clau-Claudius saw fit to extend the bounds of Empire beyond the economically profitable or even strategically justifiable limits because triumphs were worth their weight in political gold.

and compared to other regions, Germany had little economic value in plundering.

That's fair enough, Germania was a source of slaves and military manpower, but lacked mines etc.

The Romans did conquer those parts of Germany that were most easily defended, and the provinces of Germania helped protect the richer provinces that laid further in the interior of the empire.

Good point.

Germany lacked the valuable mines that made it worth while for the Romans to conquer Britain, and even with the valuable mines of Britain in Wales and Cornwall, it seems that the value of the province of Britain was rather marginal, probably barely covered the cost of maintaining the legions there. When conditions in the empire deteriorated, the Romans just abandoned Britain as not worth the cost maintaining.

.. agree its likely if Germania was conquered it would have suffered a similar fate.

Conquering the rest of Germany would have been even more of a drain, with little real gain. For the kind of agriculture the Romans practiced, Germany wasn't particularly valuable, and most of Germany laid further away from potential seaports, making transportation cost higher for any goods produced in Germany beyond the part the Romans already controlled. The Romans would have had to build a lot of infrastructure (roads, ports, cities), and the investment cost would likely be more than the profit they could expect to generate.

The did briefly grasp the nettle and it was more trouble than it was worth.

[Roma_Victrix]

I don't know of any settlements in Germania that would qualify as a civitas or poles that the Romans did not build from scratch. Were these Oppida?

Carmen Sylva already pointed this out above when noting the Oppidum of Manching in Bavaria, Germany. If you visit the page link, it claims the site reached a population size of about 10,000 people. That's a small to middling town in the modern world, but in the ancient world and especially the early medieval world that would have been a large town on the verge of becoming a proper city. Morifea's link to the Glauberg oppidum in Germany also claims that the site was clearly a permanent settlement and could have supported thousands of people, but the exact estimate is unknown and cannot be firmly determined by the evidence. These Celtic oppida might have been much rarer in Germania than in Gaul, but they still existed. It's probably why the Romans bothered invading Germania in the first place, not for its tinier villages. Well, that and the whole creation of a buffer zone for richer provinces as Common Soldier argues above. I also agree with that point.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Another big celtic oppidum was Donnersberg.

During the Celtic La Tène period, around 150 BC, an important settlement (oppidum) was built on the Donnersberg, covering some 240 hectares. Part of the wall (Keltenwall) surrounding this settlement has been reconstructed. Archeological excavations are ongoing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnersberg

It was abandoned 60/50 BC (Incursion of the Suebi led by Ariovist or Gallic Wars?).

Reconstructed Ringwall:

https://www.outdooractive.com/de/poi...556393/#dmlb=1

The conquest of Gallia led also to an sudden end of celtic oppida culture in Germania.

[Morifea]

.....and Clau-Clau-Claudius ......

Made my Day

@Common Soldier: Nothing to add. If there were some nice Silvermines in Central Germany, the calculation for the Romans would be completely different.... therefore only slaves and glory in Germany, while Slaves may be useful, to much Glory can get you killed in Imperial Rome.

Another Point to consider: Marbod. That Guy had surely a thing to say about the occupation of Germany, he is the "Third Party" that every Guerilla War has, like China and Russia in the Vietnam War, staying out of the quackmire while sending troops and Money.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

In fact Manching began to decline after Caesar's conquest of Gallia, in 15 BC the oppidum was already abandon, as the Romans arrived in Raetia. Obviously the oppidum couldn't compensate the breakdown of its trade routes to Gallia and so the high specialized population (artisans) left the Oppidum.

About Manching's economy:

Manching was the site of an extensive iron industry, which mainly produced goods for local use. The iron ore was extracted in the region. Products included a variety of specialised tools, clearly indicating a lively craft tradition. Manching was a centre of production for glass beads and bracelets, most of them of blue glass. There was also a developed production of pottery, jewellery and textiles.

Finds like Baltic amber and Mediterranean wine amphorae show that Manching was part of trade networks spanning all of Europe. Further evidence is provided by luxury tableware (campana), bronze vessels and imported jewellery.
Trade was facilitated by the fact that Manching had its own mint. A local system of coinage, including small silver coins (quinarii) and impure bronze ones served mainly internal trade. External trade relied on coins of gold and (from the early 1st century BC onwards) silver. Like much Celtic coinage, the gold coins minted at Manching are distinctively concave, even cup-shaped, (in German, such coins are traditionally known as Regenbogenschüsselchen or rainbow cups, a term derived from the belief that they are connected with the treasure to be found at the foot of a rainbow). False coinage, e.g. bronze coins with a thin gold covering, has also been found. Fine weighing scales were used to monitor the authenticity and value of coins.
The large variety of keys and locks from the settlement is remarkable. They indicate that people had property worth protecting, and that the cohabitation of so many people in a small area made physical measures necessary to that effect. Different locks appear to have been used for gates, doors, or furniture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum_of_Manching


Till bigger germanic tribal groups like the Franks or Alemanni arose next to Raetia, it was a buffer to protect the Alpine Passes.

[Cyclops]

Thx for correcting my ignorance, great get.