Thus Augustus might well come to the conclusion that with the strength of the army as it then stood--considerably increased indeed of late, but still far below the measure of what was really requisite--that great regulation of the frontier was not practicable; the question was thus converted from a military one into one of internal policy, and especially into one of finance. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius ventured to increase still further the expense of the army. We may blame them for not doing so. The paralysing double blow of the Illyrian and the Germanic insurrections with their grave disasters, the great age and the enfeebled vigour of the ruler, the increasing disinclination of Tiberius for initiating any fresh and great undertaking, and above all any deviation from the policy of Augustus, doubtless co-operated to induce this result, and did so, perhaps, to the injury of the state. By the demeanour of Germanicus, not to be approved but easily to be explained, we perceive how keenly the soldiers and the youth felt the abandonment of the new province of Germany. In the poor attempt to retain, at least nominally, the lost Germany with the help of the two German cantons on the left of the Rhine, and in the ambiguous and uncertain words with which Augustus himself in his account of the case lays or forgoes claim to Germany as Roman, we discern how perplexed was the attitude of the government towards public opinion in this matter. The grasping at the frontier of the Elbe was a mighty, perhaps a too bold stroke, undertaken possibly by Augustus--who did not generally soar so high--only after years of hesitation, and doubtless not without the determining influence of the younger stepson who was in closest intercourse with him. But to retrace too bold a step is, as a rule, not a mending of the mistake, but a second mistake. The monarchy had need of warlike honour unstained and of unconditional warlike success, in quite another way than the former burgomaster-government; the absence of the numbers 17, 18, and 19--never filled up since the battle of Varus--in the roll of regiments, was little in keeping with military prestige, and the peace with Maroboduus, on the basis of the _status quo_, could not be construed by the most loyal rhetoric into a success. The assumption that Germanicus began those far-reaching enterprises in opposition to the strict orders of his government is forbidden by his whole political position; but the reproach that he made use of his double position, as supreme commander of the first army of the Rhine and as future successor to the throne, in order to carry out at his own hand his politico-military plans, is one from which he can as little be exempted as the emperor from the no less grave reproach of having started back perhaps from the forming, or perhaps only from the clear expression and the sharp execution, of his own resolves. If Tiberius at least allowed the resumption of the offensive, he must have felt