Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ancient Warfare Podcast.

My name is Jos Poitius.

I'm the editor of Ancient Orpher Magazine.

And with me today are Mark McCaffrey, Mark DeSantis, Lindsay Powell, and Murray Dom,

the assistant editor of Ancient Warfare Magazine.

And Murray and I are currently putting the final touches to the 107th edition of Ancient Warfare Magazine. And Murray and I are currently putting the final touches to the 107th edition of ancient warfare,

which is all about the Germanic campaigns of Augustus.

But because that's not actually out yet, we thought we start out by just talking why Augustus decides

that he needs to expand the Roman Empire in a generally

northern direction.

Because there's probably plenty to say about why the Germans.

And I think Murray offered himself as the person to kick this all off.

And he said he'd be brief.

Oh, he holding me to the brief. Oh, not the controversial. Sacrificial Lamb Murray here.

So Germania, the Germanic tribes, obviously are a really fascinating field for the Romans when they start to encounter them, and as the issue will explore several

great disasters and many campaigns, as Lindsay's bibliography can attest to. The interesting thing

is that earlier in Roman history, of course, it's the Gauls that are the threat. The Gauls

are the ones who sack Roman 390 or 37 BC, and you can always appeal to the memory that the Gauls are a threat,

and of course Julius Caesar does so in the 50s BC. But when the Kimbrey and the Teutones

appear out of nowhere on the Roman radar in the late second century BC, you have a new threat

and they become the threat and suddenly the Kimberian and the Tuchonos who then generally

become the Germans in the Roman idea that they can't tell the difference between the Swavian

...