Recent years, notably in the wake of the 2000th anniversary of the Varian disaster, have seen an explosion of publications on Rome's Germanic Wars. Yet, their shelf-life as up-to-date syntheses has tended to be short, as spectacular discoveries, notably of military installations, the Augustan town of Waldgirmes and the battlefields of Kalkriese and Kalefeld, have constantly forced us to rewrite the history of Rome's military operations in Germany. Lehmann's new study on the armed conflicts in north-western Germany from the Augustan era to the a.d. 230s is thus a welcome addition to less current work.

L.'s main interest is in phases of offensive warfare and thus he devotes almost three times as much space to the period up to the end of Germanicus' campaigns in a.d. 16 as to the 220 years thereafter. For what is overall a rather concise account, it provides a remarkable amount of detail and is commendably up-to-date. Evidence for the Roman military presence in Gaul though would perhaps have deserved more attention (see e.g. E. Sauer, Coins, Cult and Cultural Identity (2005), 137–47 for references), especially as it suggests that the interlude between the withdrawal of all military forces from east of the Rhine in c. 7 b.c. and the establishment of new bases was not quite as transient as L. believes it to have been (46–8, 56).

Rome's renewed military advance into Germany, after this interlude, culminated famously in the defeat of Varus in a.d. 9, the loss of most territories east of the Rhine and a series of Roman revenge attacks, notably those of a.d. 14–16. It is now generally accepted that the remarkable cluster of Augustan coins and military equipment, not to mention human remains, at Kalkriese attests a major military engagement during this turbulent period of history. L. argues persuasively that this was part of the battlefield where Varus and his three legions perished (67–79), rather than belonging to the early Tiberian era as some other scholars would have us believe. He is also right in stressing (69–70) that the absence of post-a.d. 9 coins from Kalkriese and other early Roman sites east of the Rhine cannot be the result of ‘coin drift’ (an implausible hypothesis, based on the assumption that coins carrying political messages were not distributed directly to the army but reached it erratically and with substantial delay). L.'s alternative theory though, that the absence of late Augustan/early Tiberian issues from all advanced posts in Germany was a result of Roman soldiers in the wake of Varus' defeat having been prevented from bringing any cash beyond the Rhine (70, based on Suet., Tib. 18.1) or even face masks (73–4), especially as these were probably not parade armour (see M. Junkelmann, Reiter wie Statuen aus Erz (1996), 50–6), is unconvincing too and without known parallel. Contrary to L., the absence of post-a.d. 9 coins from Haltern and Waldgirmes is most plausibly explained by neither site having been reoccupied during the Germanicus campaigns, and we cannot be sure on what recorded or unrecorded occasion the bronze statue from a well at Waldgirmes (59–62) was smashed.

In the late first century b.c. and early first century a.d. Roman armies repeatedly penetrated deep into northern Germany, a feat never to be repeated — or so we thought until recently. Roman projectiles and other military artefacts from Kalefeld, a c. 300-km march from Mainz, have been convincingly attributed to the Germanic campaign of Maximinus Thrax in c. a.d. 235, suggesting that the much-maligned Historia Augusta (Max. 12.1) was probably right in claiming that the emperor ventured 300 or 400 miles into hostile territory beyond the Rhine (100–11). L. aptly concludes with the observation that the death of Maximinus Thrax marked the end of an era, that of large-scale offensive campaigns. But the power of Rome's neighbours was not solely responsible for this decisive change as L. implies. The depletion of forces through frequent civil wars over the next 50 years surely was a key factor for the army's total reorganisation in the later third century and the loss of some of its capabilities. L.'s book will prove useful for those in search of a current survey of Rome's most daring military advances into Germany.