15.3 Europe: 0 to a.d. 100  (Page 3/5)

Additional Notes

Central europe

Germany

In this century there were three to four million people living in the area of modern Germany with three main divisions of the Germanic tribes; The eastern Germans on the Oder and Vistula who were the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians and Vandals; the northern Germans of the southern part of Scandinavia, the Baltic islands and Jutland; and the western ones between the Elbe, the North Sea, the Rhine and the Main. The last group preserved their ancient Germanic traits and are the present day Germans, Dutch, Flemings, Anglo-Saxons and, in part, the French.

The early Germanic peoples lived simply, eating horse meat and living in log houses. They were monogamous and held slaves. Super-individual motivations such as patriotism or religious idealism were strangely lacking as these people were highly personalistic. The boundary line between the Roman Empire and the Germanic lands became fairly well established at the Rhine, but battles raged back and forth from time to time. Domitian crossed the Rhine at Mainz to campaign against the Chatti and early victories allowed him to construct a series of forts which were later extended along the central Rhine and then across to the upper Danube. Where this joined an older line of forts on the Danube part of this fortification line became known as "the limes".

Austria and hungary

The Emperor Tiberius started as early as A.D. 25 to strengthen the frontier forts of the Danube limes to keep out the northern barbarian hordes. Vindobona (Vienna) was one of three important military bases of the Danube Valley and watch towers were erected all along the river and boats were on constant patrol. At the end of the century there was a completely fortified military road from the Boden See (Lake Constantine) to the Danube limes. The southern portion of what is now Austria and Hungary, along with the western Balkans, was included in the Roman province of Pannonia.

CZECHOSLAVAKIA

As we noted earlier, the Marcomanni and Quadi Germanic tribes had occupied the area of Bohemia and then went south to help the Dacians defeat Domitian, slowing down the Roman advance in this area. The Dacians then turned on the Germans, however, and drove them from the territory.

Switzerland

All under Roman control.

Western europe

Spain and portugal

All of this area also was Roman controlled. In addition to slaves, there were several groups of free men in Roman Spain - land holding aristocrats, a middle class of merchants, professional people and bureaucrats, manual workers, soldiers and smiths. The Seneca family of Rome had originally come from Cordoba. (Ref. 196 )

France

The Gauls of France progressively reached higher levels of culture and were enfranchised as a province of the Roman Empire. Thomas (Ref. 213 ) says that about A.D. 100 the Celts invented the metal-hooped, wooden barrel which changed the wine industry greatly since the drink could be stored much better in barrels than in emphorae. He does not say which Celtic group made this progress, but we know that advances in the Gaulic wine industry offered such a challenge to the Italian vineyards that Domitian ordered half the vines in the Rhone region uprooted.