Roman Camp Found Near the Elbe

[Anomalocaris]

All ancient stats are suspect. Some are flat out fucking ridiculous as when the OT claims that 'god' killed 70,000 people to punish David for fucking up a census. The entire population of Judah at the time would have been something under 20,000.

Yeah, there probably wasn't 1.1 million jews to kill in the whole Roman world at the time when Jospehus indicted the Romans had killed that many in Judea alone during the first jewish revolt.

One tends to forget in 1st century AD, a country with a population of 1 million in the scheme of Roman demographics would have been analogous to a German or Japan to the modern world.

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Neither did Gaul but that did not stop them.

The Gaul Caesar conquered was well past the cusp of initial urbanization, and were already producing commerical goods in large volumes that were traded in the Mediterranean world.. The Romans probably could have made Gual revenue positive fairly quickly, in 10 years or so.

I think one tend to forget Roman supremacy in the classical world actually didn't last all that long. During two third of classical's world's existence there was no Roman empire.

When Caesar get to it Gual already had 400 years of sometimes intimate contact with the Greco Roman world. If the rate of osmotic penetration of civilizing influence into Germany was similar after Caesar's conquest of Gual as it had been into Gual during the 400 years before, then it would take until 350 AD before Germany would become as ready for profitable Roman conquest as Gual had been in 50BC.

But by 350 AD all sorts of things had happened in the steppes east of Germania and Rome was in no mood, and no position, to conquer Germania.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

All ancient stats are suspect. Some are flat out fucking ridiculous as when the OT claims that 'god' killed 70,000 people to punish David for fucking up a census. The entire population of Judah at the time would have been something under 20,000.

Yeah, there probably wasn't 1.1 million jews to kill in the whole Roman world at the time when Jospehus indicted the Romans had killed that many in Judea alone during the first jewish revolt.

One tends to forget in 1st century AD, a country with a population of 1 million in the scheme of Roman demographics would have been analogous to a German or Japan to the modern world.

---

Neither did Gaul but that did not stop them.

When Caesar get to it Gual already had 400 years of sometimes intimate contact with the Greco Roman world and was already well past the cusp of initial urbanization. The Romans probably could have made Gual revenue positive fairly quickly, in 10 years or so.

If the rate of osmotic penetration of civilizing influence into Germany was similar after Caesar's conquest of Gual as it had been into Gual during the 400 years before, then it would take until 350 AD before Germany would become as ready for profitable Roman conquest as Gual had been in 50BC.

But by 350 AD all sorts of things had happened in the steppes east of Germania and Rome was in no mood, and no position, to conquer Germania.

Excellent points. By 350 CE, Rome was already at the beginning of the end. With diminishing legion size, eroding leadership, the constant devaluation of the currency and some other factors, there was really nothing Rome could do in the face of the Migration Period, except to delay the inevitable.

(and not to pick a nit, but - 'Gaul').

Boru

[Minimalist]

There was contact and then there was contact. The tribes in what is now Provence had been Romanized for quite some time by 58 BC and the tribes across the border in Transalpine Gaul doubtlessly benefited from the proximity. Whereas the Belgae were considered to be fierce and warlike.
So, generalizations about Gaul are like generalizing about American Indian tribes. Some were civilized to a degree some were semi-nomadic some were horsemen and some hunted in the woods.

The Romans did not give a rat's ass about their degree of urbanization. They had their own plan which they imposed. Bibracte was abandoned and there is still argument about the site of Alesia.

The military crisis of the mid 3d century AD ( c 250 ) would have ended any hope of expansion in the north. The division of the empire into Eastern and Western halves doomed the West which did not have the financial capability without Eastern subsidies.

Add in a serious plague and a series of political revolts and it is almost amazing that the Roman empire survived long enough for Constantine to fuck us all over with xtianity.

[Tonus]

Romans? Pfft! Who gives a shit about the Romans? Why aren't we trawling the Red Sea for the remains of the Egyptian army?????

[Minimalist]

Who knows? Might find Malaysian Airlines Flt. 370.

Sure as shit aren't going to find any chariots.