11-14-2014, 12:12 AM
Quote:The big part of Germania over the Rhine was usually not included as Roman province because it wasn't considered quite worthy. The investment needed to make that a clasic Roman province was considered to big compared with what they could extract from there, as resources and economy,
I think this is the root of it, at least during the Principate. By the time the Migration Period started, the Germanic tribes east of the Rhine had cut down a lot of the forests and learned new farming techniques, so the carrying capacity of the lands beyond the Rhine increased significantly.
The big tribal confederations of the 4th and 5th centuries became possible because of the poulation increase east of the Rhine. Strategically, the later Roman commanders were probably caught flat-footed and surprised by the size of the migratory groups that came from what they had long considered "the middle of nowhere." Really, it's no wonder the limitanei and other border forces were overwhelmed, because they had grown accustomed to fending off bandits and small warbands.
The Romans, like Jerry Seinfeld, would have wondered "who aaaare these people?"
