The Wetterau Limes is the name given in the field of historical research to that part of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes which enclosed the region that became known later as the Wetterau in the German state of Hesse.
History and route
During the two campaigns of the Roman Emperor Domitian against the Chatti (83 and 85 AD), the Romans began to cut swathes of open ground through the dense forests of today's Hesse, in order to prevent their columns from being ambushed (e.g. at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest).
On the crest of the Taunus mountain range, such a swathe served as a supply and surveillance route. After the end of the Chatti Wars, the Romans began to secure these conquered regions east of the Rhine with a limes - a line of forts, fortlets, watchtowers and palisades. The forest road was guarded by wooden watchtowers to ensure continuous observation. This ensured that the southern slopes of the Taunus mountains and the fertile and strategically important Wetterau became part of the Roman Empire. In addition to the establishment of this frontier, Domitian turned the two Germanic military territories of Upper and Lower Germanian into Roman provinces. In spite of this rather modest conquest, he was subsequently celebrated in Rome with great pomp as a triumphator and coins were minted with the ambitious claim Germania capta ("Germania is conquered"). The propaganda nature of this policy is also evinced by the fact that in the very narrow province of Upper Germania (Germania superior) there were hardly any Germani, the area was populated almost entirely by Celts.
The long-held conviction that the Neckar-Odenwald Limes was erected at the same time as the Wetterau Limes, immediately after the Chatti wars, is now regarded as having been rejected. Although there were Roman military outposts on the eastern side of the Rhine from the seventies, the border running along the Odenwald-Neckar Line to Donnstetten (see Lautertal Limes) is now dated by most sources as having not been erected before 98 AD.
The state of preservation of the limes is poor due to the heavy agricultural use of the Wetterau. Only a few sections on the foothills of the Taunus, at Echzell, Limeshain and east of Hanau are visible above ground. In the early days of limes research, this situation meant that the eastern Wetterau section remained undiscovered; it was assumed that a stretch of the limes ran through the Vogelsberg instead. This was not disproved until the 1880s by excavations of the Hanauer Geschichtsverein under Albert Duncker and Georg Wolff.
Like the other sections of the Upper German-Raetian Limes, the Wetterau Limes was gradually reinforced and expanded. Particularly in the eastern Wetterau the dates when the individual forts were first built are not uniform. It is clear that there was initially a defensive line from Oberflorstadt via Heldenbergen and Hanau-Mittelbuchen to Hanau-Salisberg The forts on the line further east from Marköbel via Rückingen to Großkrotzenburg were probably not built until the time of Trajan. The neighbouring Taunus line was reinforced in the second half of the second century by the numerus forts of Holzhausen, Kleiner Feldberg and Kapersburg.
The further expansion of the limes defences to the north of the Wetterau was in order to protect its fertile soils on the one hand and to meet the high demand for the supply of the troops stationed on the limes and legion camps in Mainz (Mogontiacum). Archaeobotanical studies have calculated that an annual requirement of 3,034 tons of grain (excluding seed production) and 10,371 tons of hay were required to supply for the north-facing bulge of the limes in the Wetterau.