Origin of the limes

[D B Campbell]

When did the Romans start to think about a defensive strategy?

Besides the fact that it presupposes a "Roman" strategy, rather than the personal inclinations of successive emperors, it also begs the question that Romans could differentiate between a "defensive" strategy and an "offensive" one.

I assume you disagree Duncan? Care to elucidate your position?

Well, how would we recognise a "defensive" strategy? You may argue that Hadrian had a "defensive" mindset, based on the facts that (a) he evacuated Trajan's eastern acquisitions, (b) he "remodelled" Dacia into a smaller (more easily "defensible"? :wink: ) province, and © he built that famous wall in northern England. But would a "defensive" wall have had eighty gateways along it? And many of the forts are sited rather agressively astride (rather than behind) the wall, to maximise access to the north. Finally, the wall was not the limit of Roman involvement, as there were forts to the north, as well.

But even if we decide that Hadrian's reign saw the beginning of a "defensive" strategy, how does that fit in with the actions of Antoninus Pius? Apparently, he knew that foreign policy should include the building of barriers, but it should also include the acquisition of new territory, so he combined the two in Britain and in Germany! Have we swung from a defensive strategy to an offensive one? Or was it the same strategy all along?

What about Marcus Aurelius? Does he have a "defensive" mindset, or an "offensive" one? On the one hand, he evacuated his predecessor's British acquisitions (at least, it seems to have been him -- unlikely to have been the aged Pius himself who did so), but on the other hand, he evidently had plans for trans-Danubian conquest.

I wonder if, amid all this to-ing and fro-ing, any Roman would have discerned either a "defensive" phase or an "offensive" phase, or would he simply have seen "business as usual". Just thinking out loud ...