Historical story

The strategic use of town planning in the Roman age

Among the many, infinite, historical wonders that our time has inherited from Roman civilization, the position of some important European cities is perhaps the greatest legacy because their foundation has determined the very evolution of European and Mediterranean civilizations, but why did the Romans choose to found their cities in those places rather than in others?

Because if we look at a map of the cities founded by the Romans, we notice a series of urban agglomerations in the outermost regions of the imperial territories and in the hinterland instead, safe from barbarian invasions and raids, we find only a few scattered cities and very far from each other?

Looking at this map that shows the modern layout of Roman cities, a question arises, why are there so many Roman cities on the edge of the empire so few in the French or Hispanic hinterland?

Shouldn't there be more cities in the "safe" regions and fewer in the more "dangerous" ones?

The most immediate answer is, "certainly yes" anyone with common sense would go to build their cities in safe regions and not on the front line one step away from the barbaric Germanic tribes, and yet, Rome did not act in this way and founded many more cities in dangerous territories.

Looking at this map more carefully we can see that the cities in the Germanic area are not scattered cities, but rather, they are very close to each other, they are so close that it is almost difficult to understand where one city ends and where the next begins, it almost seems that they form a continuous line, it almost looks like an urban barrier, a city wall placed there, for some reason, an urban wall located at the extreme border of the empire, built right under the noses of the nearby Germanic tribes with which Rome was at war.

There must be a reason of some kind, and there are actually a lot of theories as to why Rome founded so many cities on the border of the warring regions. In this article I will not go to expose them all but I will focus on the combination of theories that I personally have always found most interesting and I will take the jokes from two of the most interesting and most accredited theories, which concern military economics and military strategy.

As regards the theory of military economics, this takes into consideration above all the imperial age and the last century of the republic, that is the period that goes from the reform of Mario's army forward.
The reform of Mario's military system, as we know, had made the army professional and no longer voluntary and this meant that the Roman soldiers lived for years in camps "at the front" engaged in patrolling the borders of the empire and prevent any barbarian invasions.

The presence of lands beyond the Roman borders to the east and the ocean to the west can help us understand why in the western regions Rome invested less on the borders, limiting itself to patrolling the coasts and at the same time giving us an important clue as to why the eastern front was decidedly more militarized.
Let's start by saying that the ocean itself represented an important natural defense for the empire, while on the other hand, the presence of lands also meant the presence of other peoples that were not always friendly or peaceful and the presence of the belligerent Germanic populations in the east helps us to clarify.

An empire that fears its enemies tends to push its cities away from its borders , or rather, it tends to expand its borders by creating a buffer of uninhabited lands between the border where the soldiers are stationed and their cities, this is the reason why fortifications are built and they choose to found cities where there is minimal defense Naturally, Rome itself is no less and in its first phase of expansion, especially in the early Republican age, it behaved exactly in this way. Rome for centuries lived protected by walls and a river, however, the expansion of Rome and the absorption of numerous very advanced civilizations, in some cases even more advanced than the Roman civilization itself, and the ever greater distancing of the borders allowed to the Roman Empire to make a huge leap forward on the urban, technological and military level. It is no coincidence that most of the inner cities, founded in the imperial age, are devoid of walls and fortifications, this is because de facto a huge disparity in strength had been created between the Roman army and the primitive armies of the tribes that for one reason or for another, they had not been incorporated into the empire, and above all because they had put many kilometers between those cities and potential enemies, but then, again, why are there so many cities near the territories populated by the Germanic tribes? / P>

Let us try to frame the situation and observe the balance of power between Rome and the Germanic peoples. The military dynamic we encounter is the “classic” one of asymmetric warfare , in which one of the two factions is technologically more advanced than the other and has a larger, better trained and better armed army. In this context, logic suggests that the "best" army is the Roman one and that, consequently, it would have obtained victory in a direct confrontation with more simplicity. However, as we know, dynamics of this type are the most unpredictable and very often, the smaller and more disorganized army manages to get the better of the more imposing one avoiding direct confrontation and using alternative strategies that, as we know, allowed the Germanic tribes to resist for centuries in the clash with Rome and to confirm this, as we know, Rome never managed to totally defeat the Germanic tribes.

If the Roman army were militarily superior in every respect to the Germanic militias, the Germanic tribes managed to resist thanks to strategies and techniques that today we would anachronistically call "guerrilla" (a term introduced only in the nineteenth century) carrying out sudden raids, assaults , sabotage etc. etc. etc.

In the war against the Germanic tribes Rome was engaged in fighting against an invisible and lethal enemy, an enemy that was able to strike and disappear before Rome even noticed the attack and to face this enemy Rome used what many indicate as a "psychological" strategy. Rome fought against the Germanic peoples showing the enemy not to fear them, and to do so, she united military economy and strategy.

On the borders of the empire, the many soldiers who protected him lived in military camps and forts that allowed him to guard the border. Beyond the border line, beyond the forts, barricades and trenches, there was usually a large area in which the Romans had cut down every tree for hundreds of meters, thus allowing soldiers to guard an extremely large area. On the internal front, on the other hand, numerous villages were developed, initially with auxiliary functions to military activities, in which there were mainly blacksmiths, artisans, innkeepers and prostitutes and the economic life of these villages depended almost exclusively on the presence of the nearby military camp. Over time these villages began to develop independently, with the creation of farms and distilleries where pigs were raised and more wheat and beer were produced.

These primitive urban nuclei, in which a lot of money circulated thanks to Roman soldiers, attracted more and more workers, especially peasants, merchants and prostitutes, and the villages expanded more and more until they became real cities, in which, very often, the emperor preferred to reside to stay close to the armies but without giving up the urban comforts that were denied him in the field life.

These cities, born as a consequence of the presence of the nearby permanent military camps, were used on a strategic level, first of all giving the enemy the idea that Rome was not in the least afraid of barbarian raids, because in fact, it had built cities on the borders, and these cities were protected only by the presence of the nearby military camp. Second, these cities showed the enemy the comforts of urban life and the conveniences that Roman civilization had to offer. More or less like when during the Cold War on the border with the Soviet Union radio and television repeaters were erected that allowed Eastern Europe to listen to and see European and American TV programs and television series, which gave the idea of ​​a dream west to live in, but that's another story.
Returning to Rome, these elements put together gave the enemy an idea of ​​Roman invincibility which, very often and for many years, was enough to prevent invasion attempts and in some cases it prompted Germanic villagers to cross the border to live in safer and more civilized Roman territories.
The effectiveness of the urban strategy waned only in the last decades of the empire, when the wealth and grandeur of Rome was now only a distant memory and in many frontier cities the elite ran away leaving farmers, artisans, soldiers and prostitutes behind.