Actually "At the border to the Roman Empire" would be a better title for his  this chapter, because we know very little about the Germanics, and what we know comes from  Roman sources. The archaeologists have found only little from the Roman era in the Seven Mountains. 

After the Rhine had become the frontier between the Roman Empire and the free Germania, the Seven Mountains lay in sight of the Roman legion camp in Bonn, even Cologne. Although the right bank of river Rhine with the Seven Mountains was part of the free Germania Magna, it remained important to the Romans, most of all for economic reasons: large quantities of stones were extracted from the Roman quarries at the Drachenfels mountain and transported northwards. In Bonn and Cologne, even in Xanten and Nijmegen trachyte from the Drachenfels was used.  In the late antiquity, during the reign of Emperor Constantin, also the Roman fort at Köln-Deutz was built with stones from the Drachenfels. 

All these cities played an important part during the centuries of Roman rule at the Rhine. From Xanten, the Roman commanders Drusus and Germanicus marched along the Lippe river into interior Germania; the garrisons in Xanten, Nijmegen and Bonn were destroyed during the Batavian revolt, the cities of Bonn and Cologne were hard fought over during the numerous Frankish raids. 

We know only very little about the people who lived on the right bank of the Rhine back then, in and around the Seven Mountains. Right at the frontier, a "normal" life was certainly not possible, neither for the Romans nor for the Germanics.