The Romans, of course, continued to colonize northwestern Europe as evidenced by their conquest of Briton, which began during the reign of Emperor Claudius in 43 BC.Ī dip in the cycle of revolts toward the end of the first decade AC lulled the Romans into a complacence in which they assumed that the Germanic tribes had accepted them as overlords. The Romans had refrained from outright conquest of Germania in part because there simply were no large towns or cities to occupy and transform into Roman administrative centers replete with everything needed to supply their legions.

This article was first published in the January 2016 edition of It was an expansive, but ever tenuous foothold that the Romans established east of the Rhine. But frequent revolts by the warlike Germans in the first decade of the new century threatened this expansion.

In the last two decades of the 1st century BC, the Roman army under various commanders, including Drusus, Tiberius, and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, had expanded the empire’s border east toward the Elbe River. In 12 BC, he ordered Roman legions across the Rhine as a way to protect Gaul and establish a foothold in the vast area inhabited by the Germanic tribes. Crossing the RhineĬaesar Augustus took things a few steps further in regard to the Germanic threat. But the bridge was merely a propaganda ploy to overawe the Germanic tribes, and Julius Caesar destroyed it when he withdrew a short time later. The bridge most likely was located in the territory occupied by the Belgic tribe known as the Treveri near where the Moselle River joins the Rhine. He later bridged the mighty Rhine, constructing a bridge in just 10 days in 55 BC. When the semi-nomadic Germans crossed the Rhine River during the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar promptly slaughtered their forces on the west bank and drove the survivors back across the wide river. Once across the geographical barrier, they sought to subjugate the barbaric people and rival armies that lay beyond. The glory-seeking Roman generals saw a wide river, mountain chain, or expansive swath of desert as a challenge. With their proclivity for feats of engineering, the Romans methodically advanced their frontiers.

Arminius varus