Note 8 — Chapter IV · A New Interpretation

These are perhaps the “strategical considerations which tempted the Romans beyond [the Rhine and the Danube], as the English have been tempted across the Indus”, to which Lord Curzon (The Romanes Lecture: Frontiers, Oxford, 1908, p. 21) refers. His interesting discussion of the problems of imperial boundaries calls occasional attention to the similarity between the conditions faced by the Roman Empire, and by those of the great modern empires in Asia and Africa; e. g., pp. 8, 32, 38f., and 54. Upon one point, however, Lord Curzon’s generalization is not quite satisfactory. It is that of the difference between the policy in the East, where protectorates were freely established, and that in the West, where, to use his own words: “protectorates, strictly so-called, were not required because the enemy with whom contact was to be avoided was the barbarian, formidable not from his organization, but from his numbers; and against this danger purely military barriers, whether in Britain, Gaul, Germany, or Africa, required to be employed” (p. 38). Organized states long since accustomed to the rule of a monarch did not exist in the West, and of course the Romans could not be expected to create them, but their nearest equivalent under the circumstances, tribes closely bound to Rome by treaties of friendship and alliance, did exist, at all events in the earlier period of the empire. Certainly this was the situation in Germany, where at one time all the tribes between the Rhine, and the Weser seem to have been socii of Rome, and it was the case in Gaul before the advent of Caesar, where the Haedui had long been allies (called actually “fratres”) of the Romans (at least since 121 B. C., cf. Kraner-Dittenberger-Meusel on Caesar, Bell. Gall., I, 11, 3 and 33, 2), and even the newcomer Ariovistus, as a possible source of danger, had been solemnly recognized as rex and amicus in 59 B. C. That Ariovistus had made overtures for this recognition, having attempted to ingratiate himself with the proconsul of Gaul as early as 62 B. C., is no doubt to be admitted, as M. Bang (Die Germanen im römischen Dienst bis zum Regierungsantritt Constantins I., Berlin, 1906, p. 2f.) has convincingly argued (cf. also T. Rice Holmes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, 2nd ed., 1911, p. 40), but the Romans were apparently even more eager to give than was Ariovistus to receive, in order to secure his neutrality before the impending Helvetian invasion, no doubt—nothing else would excuse the abandonment of their old allies the Haedui in the face of the outrageous treatment which Ariovistus had accorded them. A certain case of the establishment of a buffer state in Africa will be noted below. To a later period, when the Romans put all their faith in palisade and trench, Lord Curzon’s statement is no doubt perfectly applicable. But that was the time of marked decadence, when the vigorous offensive-defensive of the early period had changed to a defensive pure and simple, and when, instead of foreseeing and preventing invasion, men merely clung despairingly to a wall, and prayed that the barbarian might dash himself to pieces against it.