_Obstitit nostrae quia, credo, mentis Tardior sensus, neque disciplinis Appulit Graecis puerilis aevi Noxius error._ Such thoughts have frequently found utterance, but seldom in Sapphic measure.] [61: _Romana gravitas_, Hieronymus, _Ep._ 125, p. 929, Vall.] CHAPTER IV. ROMAN GERMANY AND THE FREE GERMANS. [Sidenote: Limitation of Roman Germany.] The two Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Germany were the result of that defeat of the Roman arms and of Roman policy under the reign of Augustus which has been already (p. 55 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 Drusus, 742 U.C. {12.}, down to the battle of Varus and the fall of Aliso, 762 U.C. {A.D. 9.}; 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 at Lyons formed for Gaul; for the more remote future the transference of the chief camp to the right bank of the Rhine, and the restoration of the left, at least in the main, to the governor of the Belgica, were doubtless in contemplation. But these projects came to an end with the legions of Varus; the Germanic altar of Augustus on the Rhine became or remained the altar of the Ubii; the legions permanently retained their standing quarters in the territory, which properly belonged to the Belgica, but--seeing that a separation of the military and civil administration was, according to the Roman arrangement, excluded--was placed, so long as the troops were stationed there, for administrative purposes also under the commandants of the two armies.[62] For, as was formerly stated, Varus was probably the last commandant of the united army of the Rhine; on the increase of the army to eight legions, which was consequent upon that disaster, the division of it to all appearance also ensued. What we have to describe