Experiencing the Frontier and the Frontier of Experience: Barbarian Perspectives and Roman Strategies to Deal with New Threats

The third century transformed the strategic relationship between Rome and the peoples beyond its European frontiers. Edited by Alexander Rubel and Hans-Ulrich Voß, this collection examines how the empire responded to changing powers in the Barbaricum through warfare, alliances, diplomacy, subsidies and the incorporation of people already connected to Roman military structures.

Along the Danube, the frontier was never merely a dividing line. Roman goods travelled into communities beyond imperial control, while brooches found at the frontier marketplace of Porolissum show how cultural exchange crossed political boundaries. Studies of the Upper Tisza region, military activity north of the Middle Danube and Roman trade reveal an empire mixing negotiation with force as regional powers shifted. It is a more entangled history than a simple story of ‘barbarians’ pressing against Rome.