Abstract
The main peculiarity of Late Roman Rhine frontier during the fifth century was a joint placement of both detachments of frontier and fi eld (mobile) armies. Τhese armies intensively interacted with each other and defended the Rhine frontier together during all the forth century, but at the beginning of the fi fth century the Rhine provinces were defended already by frontier detachments only. So, the author asks how precisely frontier and mobile military units interacted with each other and when mobile units left the Rhine frontier and came in another regions (also the question is about the location of these regions). For to answer the question the author turned to a poem of the Latin poet Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius, who was an eye-witness of the Emperor Constantine I the Great, to “Life of Saint Martin of Tour” and “The History of the Franks” by Gregory of Tour, considered evidence of anonymous geographic treatise Expositio totius mundi (“A Description of all the World”), and also applied to evidence of laws and inscriptions. Having compared these sources, the author concluded that at AD 326 the Rhine frontier had the frontier units only, while mobile expeditionary troops were at Lower Danube, in Thrace. But to AD 357 Gaul already received a self-suffi cient and single regional expeditionary army, this army fought against the Alamanns under Julian the Caesar (a future Emperor Julian the Apostate). Obviously, this army came in Gaul from Thrace in 353, then it served in internal Gallic lands, but next time, up to AD 357, Julian the Caesar transferred mobile troops at the Rhine frontier strictly. In AD 394 mobile Gallic troops left the Rhine frontier and advanced down in Italy where they continued to be until the fall of the Western part of the Roman Empire. The movement in Italy seriously reduced a defence of the Rhine frontier and led to military success of the Germans, who broke out the Rhine frontier and invaded in Gaul in AD 406/407.
Keywords
Late Roman Empire, Rhine frontier, Gaul, Roman army, Legion of Ioviani, Martin of Tour.
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