Rome's Aims in Germania in AD 14: Tacitus, Annales 1.3.6. An Attempt to Appraise a Queer Statement.

The paper is a comment on a sentence from the beginning of the Annales (a follow-on of the report that in AD 13 Germanicus had been put at the head of eight legions on the Rhine), in which we read that at the time of Augustus’ death the Germanic war was being waged but to wipe out the ignominy of the Teutoburg disaster, not for conquest or other “worthy benefits”. This statement, unlike the other, ostensibly corresponding in substance, that Augustus added to his will a counsel that the empire should be kept within its present limits (Ann. 1.11.4), has attracted little attention of modern scholars. The author argues, by setting it against the rest of Tacitean narrative and other reports on the same subject-matter, that it does not reflect the attitude of Augustus at the time of his death, but presages the position of his successor, which would prevail barely two years later with the recall of Germanicus.