The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1Mommsen, Theodor
History
The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1
Mommsen, Theodor
Roman provinces -- Administration; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
in this section therefore is not, strictly speaking, the circumstances
of a Roman province, but the fortunes of a Roman army, and, as most
closely connected therewith, the fortunes of the neighbouring peoples
and adversaries, so far as these are interwoven with the history of
Rome.
[Sidenote: Upper and Lower Germany.]
The two headquarters of the army of the Rhine were always Vetera near
Wesel and Mogontiacum, the modern Mentz, both doubtless older than
the division of the command, and one of the reasons for introducing
that division. The two armies numbered in the first century four
legions each, thus about 30,000 men[63]; at or between those two
points lay the main bulk of the Roman troops, besides one legion at
Noviomagus (Nimeguen), another at Argentoratum (Strassburg), and a
third at Vindonissa (Windisch not far from Zürich) not far from the
Raetian frontier. To the lower army belonged the not inconsiderable
fleet on the Rhine. The boundary between the upper and the lower
army lay between Andernach and Remagen near Brohl,[64] so that
Coblenz and Bingen fell to the upper, Bonn and Cologne to the lower
military district. On the left bank there belonged to the upper German
administrative circuit the districts of the Helvetii (Switzerland), the
Sequani (Besançon), the Lingones (Langres), the Rauraci (Basle), the
Triboci (Alsace), the Nemetes (Spires), and the Vangiones (Worms); to
the more restricted lower German circuit belonged the district of the
Ubii, or rather the colony Agrippina (Cologne), those of the Tungri
(Tongern), the Menapii (Brabant), and the Batavi, while the cantons
situated farther to the west, including Metz and Treves, were placed
under the different governors of the three Gauls. While this separation
has merely administrative significance, on the other hand the varying
extent of the two jurisdictions on the right bank coincides with the
varying relations to their neighbours and the advancing or receding
of the bounds of the Roman rule conditioned by those relations. With
these neighbours confronting them, matters on the lower and on the
upper Rhine were regulated in ways so diverse, and the course of events
was so thoroughly different that here the provincial separation became
historically of the most decisive importance. Let us look first at the
development of things on the lower Rhine.
[Sidenote: Lower Germany.]
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