Why not more walls?

OK, hold on tight. This maybe a silly question, but why didn't Rome build more walls? By which I mean a something along the a lines of Hadrian's Wall.
As far as I know (most likely wrongly) there wasn't any wall along the Rhine or Danube, let alone in the east? Persian/Sasanian empires were the big threat to Rome, so why not a wall?

Was it down to money, men, unsuitable ground, or even the lack of bricks?

As always, over to you good people.:)
 

mowque

Banned
Expense and they didn't really work very well. Building giant walls mean very little if you have to keep them poorly manned or mostly open to allow trade and movement anyway.

Also the Middle East 'front' (see, more of a modern understanding of borders going back to when it does not apply) was gigantic and impossible to truly fortify on the scale you are talking about.
 
You don't need a wall when you have a river, you just build fortresses at the crossing points.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
OK, hold on tight. This maybe a silly question, but why didn't Rome build more walls? By which I mean a something along the a lines of Hadrian's Wall.
As far as I know (most likely wrongly) there wasn't any wall along the Rhine or Danube, let alone in the east? Persian/Sasanian empires were the big threat to Rome, so why not a wall?

Was it down to money, men, unsuitable ground, or even the lack of bricks?

As always, over to you good people.:)

They did

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limes_Germanicus

and similar sets of fortifications in North Africa and the Middle East
 
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Because literal walls in these regions would have been ungodly expensive and likely very unhelpful. The Roman Persian border was littered with normal inpassable terain and a network of forts along the passages between the two nations usually worked perfectly fine as a defense.
 
They built walls where they could and built almost walls out of forts when they couldn't build normal walls.
 
You know, that is something I've wondered, in terms of why the Roman Empire didn't go the Chinese route of building a giant wall to defend the borders - hell, even a string of forts and smaller walls would have been great, especially in Europe. fortify the hell out of the Carpathian Mountains, then extend it to a river - say the Vistula, and not only do you make defending Europe from the latter waves of barbarians in the 3rd Century a cinch, but you've just made conquering Germania and the like a great deal easier.

I can't see them doing that across much of the Middle East granted - unless they want to hold onto Mesopotamia and fortify the Zargos Mountains - but given it was the fall of Europe that eventually led to the fall, I'd say just creating a Roman Fortress Europa would do wonders for the long-term prospects of the Empire.
 
You know, that is something I've wondered, in terms of why the Roman Empire didn't go the Chinese route of building a giant wall to defend the borders - hell, even a string of forts and smaller walls would have been great, especially in Europe. fortify the hell out of the Carpathian Mountains, then extend it to a river - say the Vistula, and not only do you make defending Europe from the latter waves of barbarians in the 3rd Century a cinch, but you've just made conquering Germania and the like a great deal easier.

I can't see them doing that across much of the Middle East granted - unless they want to hold onto Mesopotamia and fortify the Zargos Mountains - but given it was the fall of Europe that eventually led to the fall, I'd say just creating a Roman Fortress Europa would do wonders for the long-term prospects of the Empire.

Perhaps because there was so exceedingly little continuity of rule in the late Empire (as continuity of rule and the accompanying stability are very important to grand projects), and in the early Empire they weren't sufficiently worried to try.

Alternatively, maybe this is the wrong way of looking at it. The default thing for humans to do in any case is inaction; for there to be action, there must be some justification. From that viewpoint, every new security measure must have had some justification for it, and when people were neither especially worried nor especially secure they didn't take large-scale measures.

The point about the difficulty in fortifying the Middle East is a good one. The most famous frontier, the Rhine, is of course a formidable natural barrier in its own right, and Caesar Augustus (the original one) thought it a good natural frontier of the Empire, in my opinion wisely so.
 
You know, that is something I've wondered, in terms of why the Roman Empire didn't go the Chinese route of building a giant wall to defend the borders - hell, even a string of forts and smaller walls would have been great, especially in Europe. fortify the hell out of the Carpathian Mountains, then extend it to a river - say the Vistula, and not only do you make defending Europe from the latter waves of barbarians in the 3rd Century a cinch, but you've just made conquering Germania and the like a great deal easier.

I am trying to imagine the cost of "fortifying the hell out of the Carpathian Mountains" and wondering how this has made it easier to hold the empire.

Not just to construct but to maintain.
 
As for the middle east, the Roman defenses were essentially a series of ridiculously fortified fortress cities (same with the Sassanians). That's why Roman-Sassanian Wars usually bogged down into just a series of back and forth border sieges-you couldn't advance without taking key border cities because then they could just use them as a fortified base to cut off supplies from.

This was also partially the strategy of the later Roman Empire in Europe-rather than massing all your soldiers on the frontier, you keep your best troops in fortified cities just behind the frontier that acted as bases of operations to respond to any barbarian raid and deal with it effectively.
 
It's a bit disingenuous to compare the Chinese experience with the Roman experience because the Chinese only really needed to concentrate forces on one front - Mongolia, and even that was against relatively unsophisticated raiding nomads. Plus in any case, the Great Wall is not so much one gigantic undertaking as a system that was built up over hundreds of years by the different Warring states, which were then roughly linked together when the Qin united the Empire in 221 BC.

In the German and Danube front, Rome in the early days placed the border on rivers which would then be patrolled by fleets ('classis') and regularly-spaced forts, which must have been cheaper to maintain than a massive wall. Even in places like the gap between the Rhine and the Danube the Romans relied on a narrower spacing of forts, situated on strategic points (like the Neckar Valley and the Odenwald), although by Hadrian's time they did build a wall there.

Dacia is an interesting point because on a map it looks like an unsightly salient jutting out from the Danube. However its strategic function is more nuanced than that and I buy Luttwak's argument (in 'The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire') that Dacia allowed the Romans to project power in between the two hostile Sarmatian tribes - the Roxolani and the Iazyges - and prevent them from uniting together to cross the Danube. In a sense, therefore, Dacia was the Danube frontier's wall.

The system of limes has been described by other people on the low-intensity fronts of North Africa and southern Arabia.

For the main Eastern front on the Euphrates/Armenia, early Rome relied on client states (e.g. Osroene, Herodian Israel, Armenia) to 'absorb' Parthian attacks and in a sense, therefore, these were Rome's walls.

In Later Rome, given the huge distances on the Eastern front, the mountainous terrain of Anatolia where armies can only traverse through a few passes, and the increasing siege sophistication of the Late Parthians/Sassanids (which the Chinese never had to deal with regarding the Mongolian nomads), it made more sense to concentrate forces in a few 'fortress cities' (Antioch, Nisibis, Samosata) than to spread them out across a wall, which would allow the enemy to concentrate force while spreading Rome dangerously thin.
 

gaijin

Banned
You have to look at what role the borders had. Unlike modern borders, the goal wasn’t to keep everybody out and control the flow of individuals. Individuals passed fairly unhindered. If you and 500 of your best and best armed friends wanted to pass the border so as to “aggressively explore business opportunities in the fields of rape and pillage” the Roman authorities wanted both a word with you and your head on a pike (not necessarily in that order). Borders were supposed to keep out foreign attackers, not traders.

This brings us to the second goal of border controls in the ancient world: getting money. The Limes in Germany actually worked as a trading place as much as a military obstacle. It allowed the Roman authorities a way to funnel trade to certain places so they could tax it. (emphasis added). This funneling part is important. In order to effectively tax trade you would like them to all come to the same place (let’s get crazy and call it a “market place”). In the same way, it would be very helpful if all foreign invaders could be so friendly to also collect at one place. That would allow you to concentrate your defenses in one place and not having to post the third maniple, of the second cohort of the seventh legion “Asskickium” in the middle of nowhere in a hamlet called Bumfuckium (because you just know those guys will end up impregnating every farmers daughter in a ten mile radius, especially legionary Copulatum Maximus).

If you are in a forested area or in a situation where you have a narrow spot to block a wall kinda makes sense. It offers some form of protection against raiders, but most definitely allows you to control the flow of goods: ox carts laden with pottery are not the best vehicles for jumping ramparts “Duke of Hazards” style.

However, in the eastern part of the empire (and North Africa) there are certain natural bottlenecks that allow easy funneling of people: water. The middle East and North Africa aren’t really the wettest areas on this planet. Imagine again you and your 500 friends wandering about looking for things to rape, pillage and generally destroy (contrary to popular believe this was not a hobby limited to the Germans). If you wander around Lower Germania and Gaul, you can pretty much go where you want and find food and water. The only thing limiting you and your wanderlust are your imagination, motivation and those party poopers of the Thirteenth Legion “kill everybodium”.

In North Africa and bigger parts of the middle east you are often limited by things as “overheating in your fucking armour”, “not finding enough grub”, “wandering around the dessert for days on end starting to wonder if that warband leader of ours has any clue where he is” and everybodies favorite “the kiss of dead by the mighty goddess dehydration”. Water being the key point here. Fortify the main points of trade and nourishment and watch the punters come to you. Why bother building and manning a 1500 mile wall, when you can fortify the three local oasis and invite everybody to come and siege you? This is a fun scenario to imagine: you, legionary Lukius Bastardius, inside the walls with the water, the valuables and a decent supply of cheap Syrian wine and cheaper Egyptian hookers, and outside the walls under the parching sun is the violent barbarian horde doing their best Bear Grylls impression by desperately trying to suck water from a camels testicular sack. Cave Camelus
 
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Water being the key point here. Fortify the main points of trade and nourishment and watch the punters come to you. Why bother building and manning a 1500 mile wall, when you can fortify the three local oasis and invite everybody to come and siege you? This is a fun scenario to imagine: you, legionary Lukius Bastardius, inside the walls with the water, the valuables and a decent supply of cheap Syrian wine and cheaper Egyptian hookers, and outside the walls under the parching sun is the violent barbarian horde doing their best Bear Grylls impression by desperately trying to suck water from a camels testicular sack. Cave Camelus

This post in general was hilarious, but this part is not only funny but hitting it on the nail.

The area with the water, the valuables, the cheap Syrian wine and the cheaper Egyptian hookers is the area that the other guys want to get at. What's the use of spending money defending Syrian scrub that can be spent keeping the wine and hookers to yourself by making the defenses of the area they stay in better defended?
 

gaijin

Banned
I for one, have no doubt that there were many legionairs volunteering for this "wine and hooker" protection detail. It seems to have slightly higher entertainment value than the alternative: watching scrubs in the Syrian desert for six years, whilst starting to throw ever more romantic looks in the direction of Fillius, the maniple's goat and only source of nutricious milk and "relaxation". :cool:

As often though, its all in the logistics. The Rhine and Donau borders also where dual use. Firstly they functioned as a barrier to raiders (though anybody who wasn't a complete dildo could get over with some of their best buds). The other much more important function was as a logistical highway. Much much much cheaper to transport all the stuff the legions need by boat.
 
And since unlike the northern Chinese border, the northern Roman border is with lots of thick forest . . . even worse.

I'm not even going to guess at the logistics of supplying a fortified to the teeth Carpathians. Hauling stuff uphill is overrated, hauling stuff up mountains isn't fun at all.
 
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