Frontiers of the Roman Empire

The term limes generally stands for the opening up and division of a terrain or a paved way or free open path that crosses something, a field, a forest, but also the mass of enemies. In a military sense, this is understood to mean a road or path laid out to open up regions of strategic importance to the Romans - such as open countryside, forests, mountainous areas, etc. This also included areas in enemy territory. In this sense, most of the large road constructions (e.g. the Via Appia), which were built for military-political reasons during the time of the Roman Republic, could also be considered limites. In a technical sense, they were understood to mean paths that were created during the surveying of fields (limitatio).

The term limes was not initially applied in Roman antiquity to define a land border. In the republican and early imperial era, such a boundary (fines imperii) was still unknown. Only Augustus' recommendation to his successors to secure the territories they had won so far led to the gradual establishment of fixed borders. The limes was first mentioned by Sextus Iulius Frontinus, who used it to designate aisles cut in the woods in the course of Domitian's Chattian wars as routes of advance. The historian Tacitus used limes to designate a border zone staggered in depth. How the courses of palisades, ditches and ramparts were called by the Romans is unknown. The great ideal of Rome, the unity of the city and the world, is most succinctly embodied in the city wall surrounding and protecting the citizens. It was above all the Emperor Hadrian who tried to realize this ideal with his new frontier policy. It was during his reign that the most familiar form of the Limes began to take shape, with its system of countless fortifications lined up in a row - at first only made of earth and wood, later almost exclusively of stone. In 143, the Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides gave a speech at the court of Antoninus Pius, which also contained some remarks about the Limes:

Around the middle of the 2nd century, the Alexandrian historian Appian wrote in his Roman History that the Romans had

Under the soldier emperors, that section of a province that shared a common border with the so-called Barbaricum was considered the Limes. From the time of Emperor Constantine I onwards, it was mainly the partial forces newly formed by him, the limitanei (border guards) and the ripenses (riparian guards), that were associated with the limes.

Systematic and scientific Limes research began in Germany in 1892 with the work of the Reichs-Limeskommission (RLK) on the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes. This section of the Roman border fortifications is still one of the best known Limites today. The studies of the Reichs-Limeskommission, which interpreted the Limes from the outset as a defensive bulwark, were groundbreaking, but today, due to new scientific findings, some of their conclusions at the time must be critically questioned.

Even when British archaeologists carried out the first scientific excavations at Hadrian's Wall 100 years ago, the limes was still naturally thought of as a fortification for positional warfare, especially for defence against barbarians. For a long time, therefore, the main subject of debate was the defensive tactics of the Romans: did the soldiers fight the invaders from their forts and ramparts, or did they confront them in advance of the Limes? Later, the experience of the East-West block confrontation with the Iron Curtain separating Central Europe prevented new paths from being taken in determining the true function of the Limes. The image of the Limes as a bulwark against barbarians is therefore still very widespread beyond expert circles. Moreover, the presence of the occupying troops was intended to promote the Romanization of the indigenous population. Through the soldiers, even the most remote corners of the empire came into contact with Rome. Moreover, they were the catalyst that allowed the emergence of a new society on the frontier. Their goal was primarily political - to create roughly stable local governments centered on the cities, with Latin as the official language. At a much lower level, it was aimed at the tribal elites outside and in the frontier areas in order to reconcile them with the Roman occupying power in the long term. This was accomplished through treaties, financial contributions, and the granting of Roman citizenship and the importation of goods and services. In this way, even closer cultural ties were to be forged between Romans and indigenous peoples. The new subjects, however, were not to be completely transformed into Romans, but merely made to identify with the benefits of Roman civilization. Under normal circumstances, the Roman conquerors also did not aim to impose their Italian way of life on a completely foreign culture. Their key to success was not the violent suppression of initial resistance to occupation, but the gradual and voluntary assimilation of the local population into a social system based on wealth and oligarchic power. Opposition to Rome was often overcome or at least mitigated by financial and economic incentives for the subjugated elites and opportunities for promotion in the army or imperial administration. The provinces therefore produced numerous centurions, procurators, senators, governors, praetorians, and emperors. In the frontier zone, the elite's drive was directed specifically toward the accumulation of wealth. Beyond the frontier, Roman diplomacy focused on installing pre-Roman rulers within the tribal hierarchies.

Today, the Limes is regarded by most experts primarily as a population and economic control line, which also served as a demonstration of Roman construction and engineering skills. With the help of the barriers, the Roman administration was able to direct the flow of trade and population in peacetime to the designated border crossings. This enabled the empire to record trade in the provinces, to intervene if necessary and, above all, to levy customs duties. On the other hand, it was also possible to regulate the influx of entire population groups, as needed.

The fact that the Limes was long regarded as an impermeable imperial border is also related to a misinterpretation of a Tacitus text in the 19th century. This was in the context of finds of palisade and wall remains from the 2nd century AD, which could not be dated exactly at the time, and above all the modern view of the border as an absolute dividing line between nation states. Older researchers therefore believed that the Limes was a border of this kind, but this would certainly not have been the intention of the Romans or other ancient peoples. The Limes was anything but an iron curtain, but rather a membrane along which a kind of osmotic exchange of people, goods of all kinds and ideas from over there to over there was part of normal everyday life. Romans traveled to Barbaricum and went about their business there, Teutons and many other tribesmen crossed over to the Empire in return, and by no means always did they come as captives or slaves. Through these numerous contacts, in time the political and military cards were completely reshuffled. Contacts and trade with the Romans had a massive influence on the social structure of the barbarian tribes. In the West, this brought about a completely new constellation of rulers and tribal oligarchies that ultimately even threatened Rome's existence. In the East, the Parthians were succeeded in 224 by the Sassanids, who repeatedly troubled the Romans until the beginning of the Islamic expansion in the 7th century. For this reason, the character of the Limites changed in the 3rd century.

Whether wall or palisade, the architects of the Limes were not concerned with creating a standardized and absolutely gapless barrier. It was primarily intended to convey a simple message to the neighbouring peoples: This is where mighty Rome begins, with all its achievements (e.g. legal security); if someone wants to cross its borders, he must do so at the checkpoints provided for this purpose and thus submit to the laws of the empire in force. Those who do not accept this commit a breach of law and are punished for it. At the same time, it was to be made unmistakably clear to the barbarian tribes that the Romans knew how to defend themselves effectively against encroachments. Until the 4th century the empire then reacted with brutal retaliatory campaigns if necessary. The aspect of illegal trespassing of a visibly enclosed space (e.g. the individual dwelling house as a framed cult and ritual district) was also known to all neighbouring cultures, where it was also regarded as a grave sacrilege and sanctioned accordingly.

Despite the technical and logistical achievements of the Romans in expanding the Limes into a closed barrier, it was also the first sign of their increasing weakness during this phase. The Romans had to admit to themselves that the expansion of the empire had literally reached its limits. The official doctrine of the Augustan age, an ever-growing empire without end, had failed in the face of political and military realities. In time, however, the neighbouring peoples, largely excluded and less advanced in this way, probably drew different conclusions from this than Rome had originally intended. From their point of view, the powerful Rome was apparently so afraid of the barbari from the vast and dark forests of Germania and the eastern steppes, which it despised, that it now entrenched itself behind walls and palisades. At the same time, in the case of a threat from other peoples or scarce resources, the neighbouring Germanic tribes had the incentive to leave their original settlement areas and to cross the Limes in order to be able to participate, in whatever way, in the better life of the Empire (see also Migration Period). The limes stood for a clear demarcation from the non-Roman or barbarian world, but nevertheless gave the peoples of the Roman Empire a feeling of security (securitas) and togetherness for a long time.