The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History - Karatunov.net

C u r r e n t A s s e s s m e n t 325
purpose and the policy decisions behind the wars are not elucidated. Scholars
speculate on how far Augustus originally intended to go in Germany, assuming
that his objective was to reach the river Elbe and make a tidy frontier, but this is
m odern thinking su peri m po s ed on the ancient evi den ce of troop movem en t s
and siting of fortifications. Some historians think that Claudius invaded Britain
p u rely for the military gl ory and that the acqu i s i ti onof m i n erals and met a l s ,
s l ave s , and hides was simply a fortu i tous ad ju n ct to con quest and could have
continued, as the geographer Strabo asserts, without the bother of administering
the province. After twenty centuries, modern scholars cannot really hope to
understand how the emperors conceptualized the Empire or what they wanted
to gain from wars of conquest or retribution.
A major source of con troversy arising from lack of k n owl ed ge of Rom a n
Imperial policy revolves around the establishment and the maintenance of the
f ron ti ers . Luttwak (1976) su m m a ri zes Im perial stra tegy, and Ma t tern (1999)
provides a fresh overview, but it cannot be proved one way or another whether
t h ere was an overa ll plan, con ti nu o u s ly devel oped and amen ded to meet the
va rious probl ems as they occ u rred , or wh et h er there was on ly a re active response
tailored to each event. Hadrian closed off the Empire and put an end to
the idea that territorial expansion could go on and on, unchecked except by arriving
at distant oceans. He thereby incurred the displeasure of many of his subjects,
some of whom equated expansion with opportunities for exploitation. Although
there were some minor adjustments to the frontiers, the principle was
n ever revers ed . The gre a test ex tent that the Empire ever re ach ed was attained
under Trajan, and immediately after his death, Hadrian abandoned some of the
recent con qu e s t s . O cc a s i on a lly, w a rl i ke em perors ad ju s ted bo u n d a ries and
added parts of outlying territory, but in general Roman expansion ceased in the
second century ad. For some scholars, this represented stagnation and decline
(Mann, 1974), despite the fact that the Empire carried on for three more centuries
until the barbarian kingdoms were established in the west.
Study of the frontier works of the Empire naturally started with an examination
of the remains—the stone wall of Hadrian and the turf wall of Antoninus
P ius in Bri t a i n , the ti m ber palisade and the eart hworks in Germ a ny, t h e
stretches of stone walls and forts in Africa, and the various roads and lines of
towers in Dacia and the east. The problems of dating the successive repairs and
rebuilding have not been fully resolved, but much progress has been made. Yet,
the lack of knowledge of policy and purpose still limits the study of the frontiers,
which is continually complicated by the tendency to try to relate archaeol
ogical finds to establ i s h ed historical even t s , not alw ays su cce s s f u lly. More recently,
attention has turned to the functions of the frontiers, their impact on the
inhabitants within and outside the provinces, and their social and economic aspects
(Elton, 1996; Whittaker, 1994).
Study of the frontier works such as forts, fortlets, and the various towers also