Dragons were comets

[The Gremlin]

I'm not an expert on the period, but my understanding was that Rome essntially faced a long, grueling gurellia campaign in Germany, with nothing at the end to show for the considerable expense and lives lost. Germany, as pointed out, was entirely barbarous at the time (unlike Iberia, Gaul, and Brittania, where there was some level of Celtic civilization that Rome could take over). Thus, Rome would have to develop a wilderness region, with constant uprisings of natives. While a German raiding party could bee stopped by a legion (and were) they were capable individual fighters, and thus there would be a steady attrition. I'd figures that the politicians in Rome figures that the grueling, costly German campaigns were simply not worth it.

Later, of course, when those same Germans, armed in many cases with Roman weapons, stood in the ruins of Rome, they might have well reconsidered their lack of foresight...

pretty much right there. In the end the Romans became reluctant waste more money on expansion campaigns that offered little return. She adopted a defensive strategy, frontier regions were demarked by vallum and ditch earthworks, walls, and limes into territory beyond Roman control. Troop movements and their utilization changed.

There is good evidence for this in Britain, but it was an empire-wide policy that was administered by Septimius Severus....later than Germanicus' time.

Dragons beyond the boarders was simply not the case. A lack of foresight at this particular juncture was not the case either; Tiberius was reluctant to extend Rome's boarders, preferring the consolidation policy of his father for atleast during his own reign.

This has nothing at all to do with dragons.

Its like suggesting that the us military pulled out of Vietnam because too many of its soldiers were eaten by a dragon.....because the vietnamese were too ill equiped, badly trained, incapable, skinny, weak, and stupid to have managed to frustrate the occupying force by themselves.

darn, now ive said it....probably just added another chapter to DC's book !!!

no doubt the taliban are boulstered by the support of their own dragon......

i mean reports of apache helecopters and other 'hardware' being taken out by peashooters and other 'primitive' devices, c'mon! Its clearly dragonses!!!

it fits, it makes sense.......it IS FACT.

[Sir_Quack_The_Wack]

darn, now ive said it....probably just added another chapter to DC's book !!!

He's gonna need to write a trilogy with this thread...no, a hexology...a decology...a millenology!