this misfortune, and on the point of seeking his death in that ocean the assistance of which he had at the beginning of this campaign invoked so earnestly and so vainly. Doubtless afterwards the loss of men proved not to be quite so great as it had at first appeared, and some effective blows which the general, on his return to the Rhine, inflicted on the nearest barbarians, raised the sunken courage of the troops. But, taken as a whole, the campaign of the year 16, as compared with that of the preceding year, ended in more brilliant victories doubtless, but also in much more serious loss. [Sidenote: The altered situation.] The recall of Germanicus was at the same time the abolition of the command-in-chief of the Rhenish army. The mere division of the command put an end to the conduct of the war as heretofore pursued; the circumstance that Germanicus was not merely recalled, but obtained no successor, was tantamount to ordaining the defensive on the Rhine. Thus the campaign of the year 16 was the last which the Romans waged in order to subdue Germany and to transfer the boundary of the empire from the Rhine to the Elbe. That this was the aim of the campaigns of Germanicus is shown by their very course, and by the trophy that celebrated the frontier of the Elbe. The re-establishment, too, of the military works on the right bank of the Rhine, of the forts of the Taunus, as well as of the stronghold of Aliso and the line connecting it with Vetera, belonged only in part to such an occupation of the right bank as was in keeping with the restricted plan of operations after the battle of Varus; in fact it had a far wider scope. But the designs of the general were not, or not quite, those of the emperor. It is more than probable that Tiberius from the outset allowed rather than sanctioned the enterprises of Germanicus on the Rhine, and it is certain that he wished to put an end to them by recalling him in the winter of 16-17. Beyond doubt, at the same time, a good part of what had been attained was given up, and in particular the garrison was withdrawn from Aliso. As Germanicus, even in the following year, found not a stone left of the memorial of victory erected in the Teutoburg Forest, so the results of his victories disappeared like a flash of lightning into the water, and none of his successors continued the building on this basis. [Sidenote: Motives for the change of policy.] If Augustus gave up the conquered Germany as lost after the battle of Varus, and if Tiberius now, when the conquest had once more been taken in hand, ordered it to be broken off, we are well entitled to ask, What motives guided the two notable rulers in this course, and what was the significance of these important events for the general policy of the empire?