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8 - Provinces and frontiers

from PART III - THE PROVINCES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

John Wilkes
Affiliation:
University College London
Alan Bowman
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
Averil Cameron
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford
Peter Garnsey
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

FRONTIER HISTORY

Under the Severan emperors there was a significant advance of the limits of territory under direct Roman occupation, in Mesopotamia to the river Tigris and in Africa to the northern fringes of the Sahara desert. There were also major campaigns in northern Britain but any intended increase in the extent of northern Britain under direct Roman control was cancelled by the death of Septimius Severus. Only in the later years of Severus Alexander, last of the Severan dynasty, were there indications of new threats to stability along the northern and eastern frontiers.

The exceptional concentration of Roman military manpower in northern Britain remained, on paper at least, unaltered throughout the period. Hadrian's demarcation of Roman territory by the patrolled barrier between Tyne and Solway was in the end preferred to the shorter Forth–Clyde line established by his successor. Treaty arrangements with peoples beyond the frontier broke down during the reign of Commodus but it remains far from clear why Severus should have judged that disturbances on the fringes of one of Rome's remotest provinces demanded the continuing presence of the emperor and his court from 208 until his death early in 211. Apparently successful sea-borne operations against the Maeatae and Caledonii from bases such as Cramond on the Forth and Carpow on the Tay were not intended to re-establish a Roman occupation of the Forth–Clyde line. Caracalla's settlement was to bring a long period of stability to the province and was accompanied by a continuation of the comprehensive reconstruction of existing Roman bases and roads begun by Severus after his victory over Clodius Albinus in 197.

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