ABSTRACT
Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul had left the River Rhine as a frontier of Roman power (see Figure 12). The choice was bound to prove unsatisfactory because it left the Roman state directly responsible for preventing the migrations from the east into north-west Europe which had been going on for centuriesand whose renewal in the late Roman period would eventually precipitate the downfall of the Roman Empire itself. The migrations continued under Augustus, with or without Roman approval.
