Note 59 — Chapter III · Criticism of The Accepted View

Cf. Tac., Ann., II, 26, 4: “Precante Germanico annum efficiendis coeptis.” This is the basis of Mommsen’s statement (Hist. of Rome, V, p. 59): [Germanicus] “reported to Rome that in the next campaign he should have the subjugation of Germany complete.” And just preceding this the same author says: “The second tropaeum of Germanicus [in the Teutoburg forest] spoke of the overthrow of all the Germanic tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe.” See also p. 54 f. for further discussion of the campaigns of Tiberius and Germanicus. Mommsen speaks of the campaigns of the summers 12, 13, and 14 as years of inaction, a mere continuance of the war, of which nothing at all is reported. This gap in the record Riese explains, Forschungen, etc., p. 13 by the meagerness of our sources (Velleius, Suetonius, and Dio) covering the last years of Augustus, as compared with the fuller account in Tacitus of the early years of the regency of Tiberius. So Koepp, op. cit., p. 34.