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"Doctors" in antiquity broke down into two approximate groups, which we can term surgeons and physicians. Surgeons were essentially cutters and bone-setters, and likely more often than not, army trained. These guys were typically very good with fairly decent tools and methodologies, nothing like being surrounded by a bunch of armed men to improve your practice standards. Physicians were likely to be Greek and focused more on illness and disease, which they typically treated with poultices, potions, tonics, rituals and other random garbage. A good diet and a healthy immune system were your best bet, but placebo effects and the occasional valid folk remedy should never be underestimed.
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Feb 24, 2013 23:49
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QuoProQuid posted:Those were all interesting answers. Thank you. Remedy for dyspepsia and strangury: Gather pomegranate blossoms when they open, and place 3 minae of them in an amphora. Add one quadrantal of old wine and a mina of clean crushed p111root of fennel; seal the vessel and thirty days later open and use. You may drink this as freely as you wish without risk, when you wish to digest your food and to urinate. The same wine will clear out tapeworms and stomach-worms if it is blended in this way. Bid the patient refrain from eating in the evening, and the next morning macerate 1 drachm of pulverized incense, 1 drachm of boiled honey, and a sextarius of wine of wild marjoram. Administer to him before he eats, and, for a child, according to age, a triobolus91º and a hemina. Have him climb a pillar and jump down ten times, and walk about. Remedy for oxen: If you have reason to fear sickness, give the oxen before they get sick the following remedy: 3 grains of salt, 3 laurel leaves, 3 leek leaves, 3 spikes of leek, 3 of garlic, 3 grains of p81incense, 3 plants of Sabine herb, 3 leaves of rue, 3 stalks of bryony, 3 white beans, 3 live coals, and 3 pints of wine. You must gather, macerate, and administer all these while standing,72 and he who administers the remedy must be fasting. Administer to each ox for three days, and divide it in such a way that when you have administered three doses to each you will have used it all. See that the ox and the one who administers are both standing, and use a wooden vessel. Give the cattle medicine every year when the grapes begin to change colour, to keep them well. When you see a snake skin, pick it up and put it away, so that you will not have to hunt for one when you need it. Macerate this skin, spelt, salt, and thyme with wine, and give it to all the cattle to drink. See that the cattle always have good, clear water to drink in summer-time; it is important for their health. (All from Cato the Elder's De Agri Cultura, the oldest Latin prose work we have, from about 160 BC. An interesting mix of medicine and superstition, as you can see.)
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Feb 24, 2013 23:50
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physeter posted:A good diet and a healthy immune system were your best bet, but placebo effects and the occasional valid folk remedy should never be underestimed. Were the Romans aware of the placebo effect? I know it's a commonplace in the middle ages that the most effective remedy is the patient's faith in the doctor, but I don't know how far back this goes.
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Feb 24, 2013 23:56
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the JJ posted:Muslim Iberia was pretty good in that regard as well. That kind of depended on what condition afflicted you. Medieval Islamic doctors were quite professional, and they had a lot of book knowledge available, but they had very little experience with internal surgery. It's something of an unfair comparison, because there's lots of medical fields to excel at (the Medieval Muslims were particularly good ophthalmologists, aka "eye doctors", for example, and the Indians had peerless therapists), but the Romans were exceptional battlefield surgeons and patching people back together is what gets the most attention. Well, that and disease medicine, but that's really hit or miss until the invention of penicillin in 1928 - though there were some good therapeutic and medicinal options getting developed in the Near East. physeter posted:"Doctors" in antiquity broke down into two approximate groups, which we can term surgeons and physicians. Surgeons were essentially cutters and bone-setters, and likely more often than not, army trained. These guys were typically very good with fairly decent tools and methodologies, nothing like being surrounded by a bunch of armed men to improve your practice standards. Physicians were likely to be Greek and focused more on illness and disease, which they typically treated with poultices, potions, tonics, rituals and other random garbage. A good diet and a healthy immune system were your best bet, but placebo effects and the occasional valid folk remedy should never be underestimed. Definitely, though the surgeons were typically Greek as well. And in Roman times they were capable of some remarkable techniques - Galen describes intricate yet successful cataract surgeries, for example. The Greek physicians, in turn, got a lot of their medicinal remedies from the Egyptians, who had a long tradition of creating reasonably effective pharmacopoeia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_medicine Kaal fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 00:04
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Suenteus Po posted:Were the Romans aware of the placebo effect? I know it's a commonplace in the middle ages that the most effective remedy is the patient's faith in the doctor, but I don't know how far back this goes. As an aside, professional physicians usually began their careers as slaves, on the high-end, more-like-indetured-servitude part of the slave caste. The most likely buyers would have been other doctors, who were once slaves themselves. Although they were limited by their freedman status, some of these became very wealthy, and physicians touting the latest quack remedy would be passed around the upper classes. It was likely a lucrative industry, and one of the strongest arguments for certain groups of people voluntarily selling themslves into slavery under contract. Kind of like doctors today, but we call it "student loans".
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Feb 25, 2013 00:52
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Kill Dozed posted:When's the last time we actually found a manuscript that we didn't previously have a copy of? I know the Dead Sea Scrolls is probably the most famous (semi?) recent example, but are there any others? How often do we find "lost" texts anyway? It's the opposite side of the planet but The Confessions of Lady Nijo were composed in 1307 but sat undiscovered until 1940. Since it's the memoirs of a woman who became an imperial consort at 14 and then spent a few years whoring around the capital before being kicked out and becoming an itinerant nun, the book contains a lot of imperial dirt and gossip and so the Household wanted to keep a lid on it. Thus it sat in their archives for six and a half centuries until some extremely lucky scholar was A. allowed to look at their archives and B. happened to find it. As far as we know, the manuscript he found is the only copy in existence. So sometimes things get "lost" because the powers that were made them so, but they're just sitting in a closet somewhere waiting to be rediscovered  (Is there a thread for Asian ancient/classical history?) PERMACAV 50 fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 04:13
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I've got a question. I have a handle on how feudalism developed out of the roman's farming policies, but my question is about nationalism and how that relates to Rome/the ancient world. It seems to me that nationalist ideas, beliefs etc. are similar to Roman values about the importance of the state, the supremacy of Rome, the idea that you must give your life to the state. My idea is that while feudalism developed out of the realities of the late-empire economy, nationalism is the renaissance equivalent of rome's self aggrandising ethos. The way nationalism coincides with the european kingdoms attempt to gain imperial prestige and power seems way too coincidental to me. How far off about this am I?
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Feb 25, 2013 15:22
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Sex Hobbit posted:
This thread was opened up to all ancient history.
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Feb 25, 2013 15:35
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Bitter Mushroom posted:I've got a question. I have a handle on how feudalism developed out of the roman's farming policies, but my question is about nationalism and how that relates to Rome/the ancient world. It seems to me that nationalist ideas, beliefs etc. are similar to Roman values about the importance of the state, the supremacy of Rome, the idea that you must give your life to the state. My idea is that while feudalism developed out of the realities of the late-empire economy, nationalism is the renaissance equivalent of rome's self aggrandising ethos. The way nationalism coincides with the european kingdoms attempt to gain imperial prestige and power seems way too coincidental to me. How far off about this am I? Nationalism arises out of a transformation of the outlook of peoples following the overthrow/downfall of monarchies. It explicitly is about defining a set of people bound within an area that share common values/traits/language/etc and that they are explicitly different from peoples outside said boundries. Roman "nationalism" was essentially "Be Roman or  ". It didn't matter if you were ethnically Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, or purple. Submit to Rome and you're fine regardless of your moon speak/god/ritual. It's much more inclusive than 18th/19th century nationalism. The French still have major social issues with what is or is not "French", for example. Rome wouldn't give a gently caress.
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Feb 25, 2013 16:15
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Thwomp posted:Roman "nationalism" was essentially "Be Roman or
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Feb 25, 2013 18:03
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Yeah, if it hadn't been for Sulla Rome would have likely been annihilated during the Social War; which was fought over the fact that Rome refused to give citizenship to it's Italian allies who had been supplying tribute and legions for centuries. The Republic and early empire was very much NOT an inclusive society.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:21
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canuckanese posted:Yeah, if it hadn't been for Sulla Rome would have likely been annihilated during the Social War; which was fought over the fact that Rome refused to give citizenship to it's Italian allies who had been supplying tribute and legions for centuries. The Republic and early empire was very much NOT an inclusive society. To what degree do you think the resistance of the elites in the Republic to social change was responsible for the collapse of Republican government? In other words, if they'd played their cards more intelligently, might they have avoided the whole Emperor thing? Or do you think a less representative government was required to govern such a vast... uh, Empire?
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Feb 25, 2013 18:34
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Okay, I was talking more about later Imperial Rome that had long since expanded beyond the Italian peninsula. edit: kathmandu posted:To what degree do you think the resistance of the elites in the Republic to social change was responsible for the collapse of Republican government? In other words, if they'd played their cards more intelligently, might they have avoided the whole Emperor thing? Or do you think a less representative government was required to govern such a vast... uh, Empire? It's hard to say because we'll never know if a still Republican Rome could've enacted all the later reforms/laws/etc that came under the emperors and contributed towards building the empire. Thwomp fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 18:38
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kathmandu posted:To what degree do you think the resistance of the elites in the Republic to social change was responsible for the collapse of Republican government? I'm pretty sure that social change didn't have anything to do with it as opposed to the legions being loyal to it's generals, as well as the fact that in a short span of history there were around a dozen completely brilliant, influential and ruthless people all in the same place trying to gain power and none of them were going to let anyone else get it. In a very Darwinian fashion the best of them (Augustus) came out on top and since anyone else that could even remotely challenge his authority was dead the turn toward Empire was inevitable. Sulla might have done the same couple of decades before were it not for the fact that he actually wanted to restore the republic and did. But before he retired he should have murdered Pompey and Caesar because those guys sure hosed it all up.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:15
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DarkCrawler posted:I'm pretty sure that social change didn't have anything to do with it as opposed to the legions being loyal to it's generals, as well as the fact that in a short span of history there were around a dozen completely brilliant, influential and ruthless people all in the same place trying to gain power and none of them were going to let anyone else get it. In a very Darwinian fashion the best of them (Augustus) came out on top and since anyone else that could even remotely challenge his authority was dead the turn toward Empire was inevitable. Sulla might have done the same couple of decades before were it not for the fact that he actually wanted to restore the republic and did. But the legions being loyal to their generals was a manifestation of the need for social change. Specifically, the army was becoming unsustainable because the landowning farmer (land ownership being a prerequisite for military service) was becoming too scarce to fill out the ranks. Soldiers became loyal to their generals as opposed to the state when Marius removed land ownership as a prerequisite for service; the motivation for service then became "come with me on campaign and win some awesome loot" as opposed to "defend your homeland/property." In other words, the marginalization of the middle class set the table for individuals to seize excessive power via military force. I would submit that had the Senate been less greedy and had allowed land reform to occur like the Gracchus brothers wanted, power might have never been concentrated in the hands of the individual like the Marian reforms inadvertently allowed. But I suppose that's making the pretty big assumption that the Senate even had the capacity to be that progressive. Sorry if this is drifting into gay black hitler territory.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:39
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kathmandu posted:Soldiers became loyal to their generals as opposed to the state when Marius removed land ownership as a prerequisite for service; the motivation for service then became "come with me on campaign and win some awesome loot" as opposed to "defend your homeland/property."
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Feb 25, 2013 20:12
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physeter posted:Actually the Senate was dumber than that. The soldiers became loyal to their generals when the Senate, in defiance of all good sense, went out of its way to gently caress over veterans who stood down rather than demanding land grants at swordpoint. The Roman conservatives were so short-sighted that it's little wonder they were extinct as a political force within a generation or two. The parallels between the Roman Republic's collapse and the current state of our government are kind of chilling; specifically the tone-deaf resistance to progress by political elites.
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Feb 25, 2013 20:17
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This is what I really love about end of the Republic history - you have this series of exceptional leaders in a political system that encouraged individual achievement and winner-takes-all and you can see starting with Marius and Sulla the whole thing just starts to spiral more and more out of control until only one person is left.
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Feb 25, 2013 20:30
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kathmandu posted:The parallels between the Roman Republic's collapse and the current state of our government are kind of chilling; specifically the tone-deaf resistance to progress by political elites. Alchenar posted:This is what I really love about end of the Republic history - you have this series of exceptional leaders in a political system that encouraged individual achievement and winner-takes-all and you can see starting with Marius and Sulla the whole thing just starts to spiral more and more out of control until only one person is left. While there are paralells, it's not especially chilling. Our system of government should continue on just fine (fine being not-collapsing into despotism).
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Feb 25, 2013 20:37
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American history has been being compared to Rome ever since the Europeans came here. Before that, they were/are busy comparing their own history to Rome. It's kind of what you do. This moment in time is no more like ancient Rome than 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 200 years ago. You can always find parallels if you look for it. The Roman attitude to foreigners is tricky. It's very often stated like that one guy put it, with inclusiveness, and at a certain point it does sort of get there. That being said, there's always going to be stereotyping and judgments about where people are from and what their practices are like. Administratively, provincial peoples eventually became proper Romans, but that doesn't mean the attitudes of the people on the ground necessarily reflected that at all times. There were definitely prejudices about provincial peoples and barbarians, and even people from the farther bits of Italy. However, there was a lot of intermarriage and such between soldiers and locals, so in the small scale, after the immediate conquest period, the Romans were generally relatively easily integrated into their new territories, especially when they started recruiting locals. The Social War was about citizenship but it was also the culmination of a 40+ year societal dialogue on Roman land grabbing and redistribution. Romans had been seizing Italian land and building and/or settling veterans on it for hundreds of years, and they got increasingly obnoxious toward Italy in general in the second century BC. Citizenship was a way for Italians to get a say in this, but it was not something they'd been clamoring for for a long time, exactly. As late as 125, when Fregellae revolted from Rome in response to citizenship being denied them, no other Latins or Italians joined them. From the point of view of the Roman political class, giving the Italians citizenship was a way that one guy or a group of guys could suddenly have a tremendous client-base from which to draw votes. It'd be like if a candidate now could claim all of Canada as his district and count it in the popular vote. Kind of a big deal. Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 22:33
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I think it's telling that when Cicero prosecutes Verres he highlights in his charges the murder of two Roman citizens, neither of whom were from the city of Rome. Sack an entire province and nobody cares. Murder Roman Citizens and you need to get out of Italy fast before the mob tears you apart.
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Feb 25, 2013 22:53
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Is there any firm ideas on what Eastern Europe was like during the later parts of the Imperial era and on into the Early Middle Ages? Seems like while classical authors had at least some marginal understanding of Germania and could even name the names of some Germanic folks, beyond the Oder or Vistula information devolved into arm-waving and vague mumbling like "This is where the Venedi or Veneti are maybe and who knows how they got there". Also, the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire is decades old at this point, right? Are there any more recent works which add more info to the original PLRE?
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Feb 25, 2013 23:14
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DarkCrawler posted:I'm pretty sure that social change didn't have anything to do with it as opposed to the legions being loyal to it's generals, as well as the fact that in a short span of history there were around a dozen completely brilliant, influential and ruthless people all in the same place trying to gain power and none of them were going to let anyone else get it. In a very Darwinian fashion the best of them (Augustus) came out on top and since anyone else that could even remotely challenge his authority was dead the turn toward Empire was inevitable. Sulla might have done the same couple of decades before were it not for the fact that he actually wanted to restore the republic and did. Eggplant Wizard posted:American history has been being compared to Rome ever since the Europeans came here. Before that, they were/are busy comparing their own history to Rome. It's kind of what you do. This moment in time is no more like ancient Rome than 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 200 years ago. You can always find parallels if you look for it.
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Feb 25, 2013 23:19
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Eggplant Wizard posted:From the point of view of the Roman political class, giving the Italians citizenship was a way that one guy or a group of guys could suddenly have a tremendous client-base from which to draw votes. It'd be like if a candidate now could claim all of Canada as his district and count it in the popular vote. Kind of a big deal. 
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Feb 26, 2013 00:03
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Was "Sertorius" one of those nicknames the Romans liked? Did it mean "well-dressed"?
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Feb 26, 2013 07:54
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Was "Sertorius" one of those nicknames the Romans liked? Did it mean "well-dressed"? That was his family name. It probably meant "one who protects". Quintus Sertorius is also one of the most unappreciated Roman badasses.
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Feb 26, 2013 08:57
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DarkCrawler posted:Quintus Sertorius is also one of the most unappreciated Roman badasses. Definitely. He wins the Grass Crown at 30, and fights as a legate against the German invasion. By the time of the showdown outside Rome, he favors the populares, but not so much as to ignore that something is definitely wrong with his Uncle Marius. After Marius enters the city and turns it into a bloodbath, Sertorius decides what to do. First, he lures Marius' vicious army of slave and gladiator rabble outside the city with promises of payment, then his troops slaughter them. Learn some manners, brutes 
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Feb 26, 2013 14:26
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How did ancient philosophers make a living? Were they actually just wealthy people living off of their pre-made fortunes like during the enlightenment?
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Feb 26, 2013 16:48
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Aristotle was a tutor and ran a school. Plato ran a school. Epicurus also ran a school in Athens. Plotinus had rich students. Aristippus was paid for his teaching. Socrates was either dirt poor or worked as a mason. Pythagoras I don't know. Heraclitus was an aristocrat.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:02
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Halloween Jack posted:To be fair to Augustus' competitors, there's a lot of luck involved in political maneuvering in such unstable times--Augustus benefited from the Caesar name, the convenient death of Hirtius and Pansa, and meeting Agrippa, although you could argue that those are advantages he engineered. At the least there's the argument that 'convenient' deaths of H&P were very much more engineered than convenient. I'm not sure I put a huge amount of stock in it, but it's a somewhat valid view. SlothfulCobra posted:How did ancient philosophers make a living? Were they actually just wealthy people living off of their pre-made fortunes like during the enlightenment? To my knowledge, Roman philosophers tended to be more of the previously wealthy/second job kind. Cicero wrote plenty of philosophy for example, and he certainly wasn't treating it as a career. Greek philosophy is perhaps harder to pin down. For a lot of Classical Hellenic philosophy, there's this big muddy area between someone who's investigating the world and improving their knowledge, and what modern people might think of as philosophy. (Remembering that the Greek root is just 'love of wisdom' and doesn't say it has to be about existence/meaning/concepts as it tends to be today). A number of the pre-Socratics are at once advancing cosmological arguments and philosophical arguments. As such, there were those teachers known as sophists, many of whom did have philosophical ideas, but also would lecture/tutor in all sorts of other areas. Sometimes that could be explicitly backed by saying you'd be a greater person for it, sometimes it was closer to the straight-up education of today. Sophists who advanced rhetoric particularly had a good chance to earn money because oratory was a significant skill for the ambitious. You're pretty unlikely to be able to just become a sophist from any background - you probably need a bit of education and spare time first - but I'm pretty sure a number of them could have later sustained themselves financially just from what they did. Looking at Sokrates for this is interesting: he doesn't come from a hugely wealthy background (Sophroniskos being a stone-worker), but he still ended up as one of the most famous philosophers ever. He himself doesn't seem to have had a great deal of personal wealth at all and lived fairly frugally but you can still see in him how the sophists could get paid. He ended up surrounded by a number of the elite and they stumped up money when he couldn't afford a potential fine.
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Feb 26, 2013 19:15
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Of course, during the late Roman period you start getting the Christian philosophers, like St Augustine, who were usually priests, monks or even bishops. A lot of them tend to be regarded primarily as theologians nowadays, but as was said in the previous post, the distinctions weren't so hard and fast at the time.
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Feb 26, 2013 21:34
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euphronius posted:Pythagoras I don't know. I thought that the current working hypothesis is that Pythagoras never existed as a historical person
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Feb 27, 2013 01:08
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Captain Postal posted:I thought that the current working hypothesis is that Pythagoras never existed as a historical person I knew that theorem was bullshit. Triangles my rear end.
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Feb 27, 2013 01:57
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Wikipedia posted:Because of the secretive nature of his school and the custom of its students to attribute everything to their teacher, there is no evidence that Pythagoras himself worked on or proved this theorem. That doesn't sound like modern universities and PhD students at all...
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Feb 27, 2013 02:19
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euphronius posted:Aristotle was a tutor and ran a school. Plato ran a school. Epicurus also ran a school in Athens. Plotinus had rich students. Aristippus was paid for his teaching. Socrates was either dirt poor or worked as a mason. Pythagoras I don't know. Heraclitus was an aristocrat. Thales was a noble and also a speculator, Democritus was independently wealthy, and Diagoras "the Athiest" ended up as his slave after a series of unfortunate events. Philosophy was a profession for the rich, but it did take all kinds.
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Feb 27, 2013 03:30
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Sleep of Bronze posted:At the least there's the argument that 'convenient' deaths of H&P were very much more engineered than convenient. I'm not sure I put a huge amount of stock in it, but it's a somewhat valid view. Honestly, Augustus luckiest break was the fact that Caesarion was all of 13. If he had been an adult when Caesar died a whole lot would have been different. Given many of the Legions that follow Augustus would have followed him even with the Roman adoptions practices.
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Feb 27, 2013 04:08
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On ancient philosophers: Many made their living as teachers as well, Epictetus was one of the most famous of the Roman stoics and started out as a slave. His teachings became influential and people would pay him a fair amount of money for philosophical instruction. This was probably the most common form of philosophers, they would not only impart learning and understanding but having an influential teacher was a way of making connections yourself (among the other students no doubt from reasonably wealthy families) and using the teacher's own name and connections. There were the itinerant philosophers as well. Most famously the Cynics (starting with Diogenes) who believed that true happiness lay in rejecting desire and making do with the bounty of nature and basically lived off charity while berating everyone else for losing sight of what truly matters. This was somewhat common in the Empire I believe where they were viewed somewhat like modern buskers, their teachings were viewed as performances (though that might not quite be the right way to phrase it. Certainly there was a greater trend later on to treat philosophers as rhetorical performances without actually taking on board any of the beliefs) and people would give them alms. Of course quite a few philosophers were also nobles or other higher ups that had the free time and learning to spend time doing philosophy, somewhat like the gentlemen scientists of the 19th century. Cicero has already been mentioned but Marcus Aurelius is probably the most famous of the Roman Stoics and made it all the way to Emperor. Julian the Apostate was another Emperor with a strong philosophical bent, I'm not sure if he did actually make any contributions but he was very much swimming against the Christian tide at the time so I doubt there would have been too many efforts made to preserve his writings. Finally there were professional positions available, the four major schools all had 'seats' in Athens founded by one of the Emperors and other cities had similar set ups. This sort of thing was more common later on as philosophy and education generally became more entrenched and less the preserve of individuals who happened to be interested in it and had the free time to pursue it. I'm not sure to what exten holding the seat of Academic philosophy meant one had to follow the teachings of Plato but between the New Academics, Neoplatonism, etc. it's not clear to me that that would have strictly defined what you were allowed to teach/believe anyway.
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Feb 27, 2013 15:06
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I'm just curious about something lately from watching the recent Rome 2 trailer, wasn't the significance of the battle of Teutoburg Forest exaggerated due to German Nationalism in 19th and early 20th centuries?
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Mar 1, 2013 00:44
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Just posting off the top of my head ... yes and no. It was a pretty brutal defeat, but the Empire's borders remained basically secure and Augustus took steps to avoid much disorder at home as the news disseminated. Its biggest significance - I think - is that it was a significant defeat for Augustus (not him in person, obviously, but still). During Augustus' dominion, Rome had a period of pretty incredible prosperity and success. Some of it was probably down to Augustus himself, a lot of it he used for his own gain, but that it was a pretty sweet time for Empire is undeniable. And Teutoburg's a stubborn blemish on an otherwise very nice record. (Without it, and without the poor sod's relatives and nominated heirs continually screwing up or plain dying, Augustus' reign would be pretty unbelievable).
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Mar 1, 2013 01:40
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achillesforever6 posted:I'm just curious about something lately from watching the recent Rome 2 trailer, wasn't the significance of the battle of Teutoburg Forest exaggerated due to German Nationalism in 19th and early 20th centuries? Yes, it was pretty significantly exaggerated IMO. 20 years before that battle, Nero Drusus Germanicus was wrecking Germanic tribes like crazy. 7 years afterwards, Germanicus Julius Caesar beat Ariminius and a larger Germanic coalition quite handily. The Romans through the 1st and 2nd centuries AD were more than capable of beating Germanic forces so long as they had competent generals. The thing is that beating the Germans wasn't reason enough to expand into Germany. Much the same as how the Romans retreated from Southern Scotland after the battle of Mons Graupius despite winning it; it would just have cost more to administrate that relatively empty and uncontrollable land than they would gain wealth from it. Roman occupation was based around cities that could be used as nodes of control and centres of taxation - even Gaul had relatively large towns that could serve that purpose. Germany at that time had nothing of the sort, and no real resources that would entice Roman colonists there. It wouldn't have made any more sense than conquering vast swathes of the Sahara.
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