The German people of antiquity stand out as Rome’s greatestadversary. Caesar never tried to conquer them, content to have them on theother side of the Rhine from his Gaul. Augustus designed a boundary to containthem using the natural boundaries of the Rhine and Danube rivers. After Drususand Tiberius, Augustus’ stepsons, set up the southern boundary on the Danube in15 B.C, Augustus put in place a plan to move the eastern boundary to the Weserriver. Drusus accomplished that positioning by 11 B.C. and then pushed on tothe Elbe in 9 B.C, before his death after falling off a horse. By the end ofhis life, and not long after the Teutoburg disaster, Augustus pulled thewestern boundary back to the Rhine and counseled Tiberius to leave it there.
But the Rhine would not be the problem. It was the Danube thatwould prove to be the sieve through which the Germans would attack Rome and itsMediterranean provinces over a three hundred year period and bring down theempire in the west.
Who were these Germans?
They were not one people but a group of tribes inhabiting Germanyand points east to the north shore of the Black Sea. Our knowledge of them issketchy and the facts missing or unreliable, so we have to piece together thehistory. We do have their names and maps showing where they lived.
Caesar spoke of the Chatten, Usipeter, and Friesen. Butthere were also larger tribes made up of absorbed smaller groups. The Goths, for example,consisted of Ostragoths (eastern branch) and Visigoths (western branch) with varyingnumbers of smaller tribes included in them. Many times the smaller tribes wouldgo to war with their larger brethren, but remain separate.
The map above shows the major tribes of Germany. Each ofthem would have a significant impact on the future of Europe. The Franks andBurgunder would occupy France, the Lombards northern Italy, and the Goths andVandals would come to control most of Europe and beyond. I have indicated thelocation of the Rhine and Danube rivers in red to give the reader a sense ofthe Roman borders with the Germans.
In the next few posts we will describe the major tribes inmore detail and show how they were able to destroy the western empire.
