Note 121 — Chapter III · Criticism of The Accepted View

p. 233. Pelham, “The Roman Frontier in Southern Germany” (in Essays on Roman History, 1910, p. 179 f.), while speaking repeatedly of Upper and Lower Germany, limits his discussion for the most part to the period after Augustus’ time and specifically to the territory lying along the left bank of the Rhine. He says, referring to Tacitus’ statement (Germ., 29) to the effect that a stretch of territory beyond the Upper Rhine had been annexed by Rome and made a part of the province, that Upper Germany must be the province meant; that the land annexed to it was in reality “debatable land” (dubiae possessionis of Tacitus), and had been so for more than 150 years. The last sentence clearly indicates that, in the writer’s view, Rome had never had the land organized as her own territory.