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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Tacitus is the only ancient writer to give any information about the Agri Decumates, or indeed even to mention them. Thus, all that we know of them is confined to the period c.a.d. 70-98. In the Germania, dated firmly to the latter year, Tacitus tells us that the occupants of the Decumates agri could hardly count as Germans. They were rather immigrants of fairly recent origin drawn from the least substantial groups among the Gauls, who, through want, had taken up possession of this risky territory. More recently, however, a defensive line had been drawn, garrisons sent in and the area had become a pocket of imperial security and a part of the province (of Upper Germany).
1 Cornelii Taciti de Origine et Situ Germanorum (ed. Anderson, J. G. C., 1938) chapter 29, pp. 148–9; Mattingly, H., Tacitus on Britain and Germany, Ch. 29; Much, R., Die Germanien des Tacitus (ed. Jahnkuhn, & Lange, , 1967), 370 ff.Google Scholar; Piganiol, A., ‘Les Gaulois au Württemberg (Tacite, Germania 29),’ Bulletin G. Budé, N.S.i (1946), 230 ff.Google Scholar; Pflaum, H. G., ‘Du nouveau sur les agri decumates a la lumiere de CIL X 3872’, Bonner Jahrbücher clxiii (1963), 224 ff.Google Scholar
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