Barbarian thread?

Barbarian thread?

Which tribe would scare your average legionary the most?

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Huns probably. They had good pr

Scare as in "holy fuck these people are pure savages"? Probably the Caledonians, that far north was foreign land even to the other Celtic Britons.

WE WUZU PIRATESU DESU!

Any write-ups you can link to on these fear-inducing Caledonians?

German tribes were known to be ferociously warlike.

The Gallic and Iberian tribes were eventually conquered, but Rome never managed to subdue Germania.

As for late WRE/ERE, the Huns.

>Rome never managed to subdue Germania
Why was that exactly? Certainly it's more than "the Germans were good warriors"

Forests.

Certainly there were plenty of forests in France or the Balkans.

While shitty realism and plot wise, the Eagle does a good job of portraying the Caledonians through how the Romans THOUGHT the people's who lived beyond Hadrians wall acted like. They presented an enduring obsticule that not even the might of 50,000 Romans could conquer.

>The tribal nature of the Picts meant that they could move quickly from one locale to another, they were not tied to one single settlement in a geographical region, and they were adept at living off the land. The Romans, therefore, found themselves facing opponents who had no central cities to conquer, no farmlands to burn, and who, after Mons Graupius, refused to face them in the field as other peoples had done. The Picts were unconquerable because they presented the Romans with a new paradigm which Rome could not adapt to. The Roman legions had not yet encountered this kind of guerilla warfare (which would also prove effective in the Goth resistance under Athanaric to Roman invasion of their lands in 367-369 CE) and so were unable to subdue an enemy who lived, moved, and fought unlike any opponent they had faced before.

There was nothing of value they could conquer. Gauls/Celts had plenty of gold and other valuable resources.

Here's the only one I could find that was fairly in depth, a good read imo.
hal_macgregor.tripod.com/gregor/extinction.html

Also by the Standards of the Time the Empire was overstretched

dacians scared the crap out of romans fighting them, but it wasnt about savagery or barbarism, they just had weapons that seemed to cut people in half armor and all, legionares even improvised reinforcements to their helmets and shields

what did the romans mean by describing germanic fighting as ''they fight more with their bodies than with their weapons'' ?

Probably the Iazyges or Roxolani.

>spend most of your time fighting bumfuck barbarians armed with little more than a tunic and a club or spear
>suddenly sat in a tiny fort on the edge of Dacia
>strange new barbarians appear from beyond the horizons of the known world
>dragon banners making a terrifying whistling noise
>Asian appearance
>horseback archers in an area where most people are mere farmers
>capturing and raping your women

...

Me.

Nothing of value there worth the effort of conquest. Rome wasn't as conquering as you might think, a hell of a lot of what they ended up ruling was more or less accidental. They would get dragged into a war and win, and make the place a client kingdom because they couldnt be bothered to rule it, then more drama would happen and they'd say fuck it lets rule then. Thats pretty much how they ended up ruling Africa and Asia

So Germany, with very little resources or value, wasn't worth Roman lives.

Read Luttwak and Isaacs. Generally it was because they were not worth the effort it took to subdue them, and Romans had nowhere near the geographic knowledge people expect them to have had. Its less "why did they not conquer Germania" than "why did they conquer everywhere else?". There was no guiding force behind this shit. Emperors would just go on campaign for the kudos they got at home and to shore up their position, nobody really thought "gotta make the borders logical n' shit".

Worst post of the thread

>spend most of your time fighting bumfuck barbarians armed with little more than a tunic and a club or spear
The majority of Romes barbarian enemies were accomplished metal workers who actually taught the Romans much. Chainmail is from Celts, the Gladius is from Iberia, etc
>Asian appearance
Iazyges and Roxolani were Sarmatians who were an Iranic people. They were Caucasian.
>horseback archers in an area where most people are mere farmers
Actually Dacia and Thracia were well known for their cavalry and they had horse archers. The Thracians were even called a horse people

DONT. TALK. SHIT

Thick woods that functioned as a giant wall towards Gaul. Barely any infrastructure. No cities and big communities of people the Romans could exploit. Culture and language barriers. There were resources there, the Romans tried to advance further than Cologne but then the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

>Rome never managed to subdue Germania.
The how come every map of the Roman Empire out there includes Germany in it?

it doesnt, only parts of west germany

I thought the Romans were supposed to be Greek enthusiasts? If they had read Herodotus' account of the Persian campaign in Scythia then they would have been easily prepared for all that.

How do you deal with sparse guerilla groups anyhow? Just gradually expand your civilisation into their territory over decades, and have a policing attitude instead of a military one?

>Why was that exactly?
The empire was too big already, and the army was barely big enough to defending it, nevermind expanding it, especially towards a resource poor and rebellious region like Germany.

>How do you deal with sparse guerilla groups anyhow?
Relocate civilian population away and colonize the land with your people.

What if they already sent their civilians further north or slaughtered them themselves?

>What if they already sent their civilians further north
Then they're raiders, not guerrilla. Counter raid them.
>or slaughtered them themselves?
Then they are fucked, guerrilleros lack the ability to keep themselves supplied without a civilian population that supports them. You just have to outlast them.

imagine a guy who mostly just wants to charge into you and knock you down.

There you go.

You. I like you.