The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1
by Theodor Mommsen · English · Gutenberg #48966 · 969,366 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1
Author: Theodor Mommsen
Illustrator: Heinrich Kiepert
Translator: William P. Dickson
Release date: May 15, 2015 [eBook #48966]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48966
Credits: Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Brian Wilcox and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN. V. 1 ***
Transcriber's Notes: Italic text is marked _thus_. The original
accentuation, spelling and hyphenation has been retained. See further
Transcriber's Notes which follow the Index.
THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN
[Illustration: Printer's Mark]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE PROVINCES
OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE
FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN
BY
THEODOR MOMMSEN
TRANSLATED
WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION AND ADDITIONS
BY
WILLIAM P. DICKSON, D.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
VOL. I
_WITH EIGHT MAPS BY PROFESSOR KIEPERT_
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1909
_First Edition_ 1886
_Reprinted with corrections_ 1909
TO
LEOPOLD KRONECKER
AND
RICHARD SCHÖNE
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE
PREFACE
A wish has often been expressed to me that the History of Rome might
be continued, and I have a desire to meet it, although it is difficult
for me, after an interval of thirty years, to take up again the thread
at the point where I had to let it drop. That the present portion does
not attach itself immediately to the preceding, is a matter of little
moment; the fifth volume would be just as much a fragment without the
sixth as the sixth now is without the fifth. Besides, I am of opinion
that, for the purposes of the cultured public, in whose minds this
History is intended to promote an intelligent conception of Roman
antiquity, other works may take the place of the Two Books, which
are still wanting between this (the Eighth) and the earlier ones,
more readily than a substitute can be found for that now issued. The
struggle of the Republicans in opposition to the monarchy erected by
Caesar, and the definitive establishment of the latter, are so well
presented in the accounts handed down to us from antiquity that every
delineation amounts essentially to a reproduction of their narrative.
The distinctive character of the monarchical rule and the fluctuations
of the monarchy, as well as the general relations of government
influenced by the personality of the individual rulers, which the
Seventh Book is destined to exhibit, have been at least subjected
to frequent handling. Of what is here furnished--the history of the
several provinces from the time of Caesar to that of Diocletian,--there
is, if I am not mistaken, no comprehensive survey anywhere accessible
to the public to which this work addresses itself; and it is owing,
as it seems to me, to the want of such a survey that the judgment of
that public as to the Roman imperial period is frequently incorrect
and unfair. No doubt such a separation of these special histories from
the general history of the empire, as is in my opinion a preliminary
requisite to the right understanding of the history of the imperial
period, cannot be carried out completely as regards various sections,
especially for the period from Gallienus to Diocletian; and in these
cases the general picture, which still remains to be given, will have
to supply what is wanting.
If an historical work in most cases acquires a more vivid clearness
by an accompanying map, this holds in an especial degree true of our
survey of the Empire of three Continents according to its provinces,
and but few of its readers can have in their hands maps adequate for
the purpose. These will accordingly be grateful, along with me, to
my friend Dr. Kiepert, for having, in the manner and with the limits
suggested by the contents of these volumes, annexed to them, first
of all, a sheet presenting a general outline of the _Orbis Romanus_,
which serves moreover in various respects to supply gaps in those that
follow, and, in succession, nine special maps of the several portions
of the empire drawn--with the exception of sheets 5, 7, 8, 9--on the
same scale. The ancient geographical names occurring in the volumes,
and the more important modern ones, are entered upon the maps; names
not mentioned in the volumes are appended only, in exceptional cases,
as landmarks for the reader's benefit. The mode of writing Greek names
followed in the book itself has been displaced by the Latinising
spelling--for the sake of uniformity--in several maps in which Latin
names preponderate. The sequence of the maps corresponds on the whole
to that of the book; only it seemed, out of regard for space, desirable
to present on the same sheet several provinces such as, _e.g._ Spain
and Africa.
PREFATORY NOTE
In the fifth volume of his _Roman History_, issued in 1885, Mommsen
described the Roman provinces as they were during the first three
centuries of our era. It has been called, by one specially qualified
to judge, Otto Hirschfeld, the best volume of the whole work. It is
indeed a wonderful book. Here Mommsen summed up with supreme mastery
a vast and multifarious mass of detail. Thousands of inscriptions
yielded up their secrets; all scattered archaeological discoveries
found recognition; the vast and dim areas of the provinces took
definite shape and colour. Now at length it became easy to discern
the true character of the Roman Empire. Our horizon broadened beyond
the backstairs of the Palatine and the benches of the Curia to the
wide lands north and east and south of the Mediterranean, and we began
to realise the achievements of the Empire--its long and peaceable
government of dominions extending into three continents, its gifts of
civilisation, language, and citizenship to almost all its subjects, its
creation of a stable and coherent order out of which rose the Europe of
to-day. The old theory of an age of despotism and decay was overthrown.
The believer in human nature could now feel confident that, whatever
their limitations and defects, the men of the Empire wrought for the
progress and happiness of the world.
The book was at once translated into English by, or at least
under the supervision of, the late Dr. W. P. Dickson, Professor of
Divinity in the University of Glasgow. Twenty-five years before,
the same translator had rendered the earlier volumes of the history
into English, and rendered them to the satisfaction of all readers.
The translation of the fifth volume was less happy. Its style was
difficult, and its errors--at least in some chapters--were numerous and
surprising. The ideal remedy for the evil would be a fresh version.
But the ideal is seldom attainable in published literature, and good
prose translations are particularly rare. When, therefore, the time
came to reprint the book, it seemed best not to let it again appear
as it was, but to attempt some revision, even though the existence of
stereotyped plates confined that revision within very narrow limits. I
have accordingly altered a large number of passages where Dr. Dickson's
rendering was unintelligible or inaccurate, and I have tried to take
account of the few changes which Mommsen himself introduced into the
original German down to the fifth and last edition of 1904. In doing
this I have had valuable help, which I desire to acknowledge, from Dr.
George Macdonald. That I have left many defects, both by accident and
by the exigencies of the stereotyped plates, is inevitable. But the
alterations run into several hundreds, and at any rate "the government
which prohibited voluntary fireworks" (freiwillige Feuerwehren), the
"tribes who dwelt in hurdles" (Hürden), and the "crescents which gave
the signal to run away" (Hörner), and some similar blots have vanished.
As the translation is intended for English readers, I have added some
notes on the chapter relating to Britain. It was far too large a
task to do the same for other chapters. But a few references may be
added here on two general questions. The results obtained by recent
excavations on the Germano-Raetian Limes (Chapter IV., pp. 152 foll.)
have been well summarised in E. Fabricius' _Die Besitznahme Badens
durch die Römer_ (Heidelberg, 1905), in an article by G. Lachenmaier
in the _Württembergische Vierteljahreshefte für Landesgeschichte_ for
1906, and in one by the late Professor Pelham in the _Transactions_ of
the Royal Historical Society, reprinted as Chapter IX. in his collected
papers (Clarendon Press, 1909). The student should also consult the
excellent _Berichte über die ... römisch-germ. Forschung_ for 1905-8,
edited by Dr. H. Dragendorff (Frankfurt, 1905-9). The problem of the
Hellenisation of Syria (Chapter X.) has been treated, with a solution
unfavourable to the Hellenic element, by Theodor Nöldeke in the
_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_ for 1885
(xxxix. 332), and the two views have been compared by Mitteis in his
_Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_ (Leipzig, 1891, pp. 25 foll.).
The maps are those prepared by the late Dr. Kiepert for the original
German. Modern and medieval names are printed in letters slanting
backwards; in Maps VIII. and IX. old Oriental names are included in
square brackets. The presence of a few German terminations or words on
some of the maps will, I hope, cause little trouble.
F. HAVERFIELD.
CONTENTS
BOOK EIGHTH
_THE PROVINCES AND PEOPLE, FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN_
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER I.
THE NORTHERN FRONTIER OF ITALY 7
CHAPTER II.
SPAIN 63
CHAPTER III.
THE GALLIC PROVINCES 78
CHAPTER IV.
ROMAN GERMANY AND THE FREE GERMANS 117
CHAPTER V.
BRITAIN 170
CHAPTER VI.
THE DANUBIAN LANDS AND THE WARS ON THE DANUBE 195
CHAPTER VII.
GREEK EUROPE 252
CHAPTER VIII.
ASIA MINOR 320
MAPS I. to VIII.
INDEX From Vol. II.
BOOK EIGHTH.
THE PROVINCES AND PEOPLE FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN.
Go through the world and converse with every one.
FIRDUSI.
INTRODUCTION.
The history of Rome under the Empire presents problems similar to those
encountered in the history of the earlier Republic.
Such information as may be directly obtained from literary tradition
is not merely without form and colour, but in fact for the most part
without substance. The list of the Roman monarchs is just about as
trustworthy and just about as instructive as that of the consuls of the
republic. The great crises that convulsed the state may be discerned in
outline; but we are not much better informed as to the Germanic wars
under the emperors Augustus and Marcus, than as to the wars with the
Samnites. The republican store of anecdote is very much more decorous
than its counterpart under the empire; but the tales told of Fabricius
and of the emperor Gaius are almost equally insipid and equally
mendacious. The internal development of the commonwealth is perhaps
exhibited in the traditional accounts more fully for the earlier
republic than for the imperial period; in the former case there is
preserved a picture--however bedimmed and falsified--of the changes of
political order that were brought at least to their ultimate issue in
the open Forum of Rome; in the latter case the arrangements are settled
in the imperial cabinet, and come before the public, as a rule, merely
in unimportant matters of form. We must take into account, moreover,
the vast extension of the sphere of rule, and the shifting of the vital
development from the centre to the circumference. The history of the
city of Rome widens out into that of the country of Italy, and the
latter into that of the Mediterranean world; and of what we are most
concerned to know, we learn the least. The Roman state of this epoch
resembles a mighty tree, the main stem of which, in the course of its
decay, is surrounded by vigorous offshoots pushing their way upwards.
The Roman senate and the Roman rulers soon came to be drawn from any
other region of the empire just as much as from Italy; the Quirites of
this epoch, who have become the nominal heirs of the world-subduing
legionaries, have nearly the same relation to the memories of the olden
time as our Knights of St. John have to Rhodes and Malta; and they look
upon their heritage as a right capable of being turned to profitable
account--as an endowment provided for the benefit of the poor that
shrink from work.
Any one who has recourse to the so-called authorities for the history
of this period--even the better among them--finds difficulty in
controlling his indignation at the telling of what deserved to be
suppressed, and at the suppression of what there was need to tell.
For this epoch was also one productive of great conceptions and
far-reaching action. Seldom has the government of the world been
conducted for so long a term in an orderly sequence; and the firm rules
of administration, which Caesar and Augustus traced out for their
successors, maintained their ground, on the whole, with remarkable
steadfastness notwithstanding all those changes of dynasties and of
dynasts, which assume more than due prominence in a tradition that
looks merely to such things, and dwindles erelong into mere biographies
of the emperors. The sharply-defined sections, which--under the current
conception, misled by the superficial character of such a basis--are
constituted by the change of rulers, pertain far more to the doings
of the court than to the history of the empire. The carrying out of
the Latin-Greek civilising process in the form of perfecting the
constitution of the urban community, and the gradual bringing of the
barbarian or at any rate alien elements into this circle, were tasks,
which, from their very nature, required centuries of steady activity
and calm self-development; and it constitutes the very grandeur of
these centuries that the work once planned and initiated found this
long period of time, and this prevalence of peace by land and sea, to
facilitate its progress. Old age has not the power to develop new
thoughts and display creative activity, nor has the government of the
Roman empire done so; but in its sphere, which those who belonged
to it were not far wrong in regarding as the world, it fostered the
peace and prosperity of the many nations united under its sway longer
and more completely than any other leading power has ever succeeded
in doing. It is in the agricultural towns of Africa, in the homes of
the vine-dressers on the Moselle, in the flourishing townships of the
Lycian mountains, and on the margin of the Syrian desert that the work
of the imperial period is to be sought and to be found. Even now there
are various regions of the East, as of the West, as regards which the
imperial period marks a climax of good government, very modest in
itself, but never withal attained before or since; and, if an angel of
the Lord were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus
Antoninus was governed with the greater intelligence and the greater
humanity at that time or in the present day, whether civilisation
and national prosperity generally have since that time advanced or
retrograded, it is very doubtful whether the decision would prove in
favour of the present. But, if we find that this was the case, we ask
of our surviving books for the most part in vain how it came to be
so. They no more give an answer to this question than the traditional
accounts of the earlier republic explain the mighty phenomenon of the
Rome, which, in the footsteps of Alexander, subdued and civilised the
world.
The one void as little admits of being filled up as the other. But it
seemed worth our making the attempt for once to turn away our eyes
from the pictures of the rulers with their bright or faded, and but
too often falsified, colours, as well as from the task of linking into
a semblance of chronological order fragments that do not fit each
other; and, instead of this, to collect and arrange such materials as
tradition and the monuments furnish for a description of the Roman
provincial government. It seemed worth while to collate the accounts
accidentally preserved by the one or by the other, to note traces of
the process of growth embedded in its results, and to view the general
institutions in their relation to the individual provinces, along with
the conditions given for each by the nature of the soil and of the
inhabitants, so as to work out by the imagination--which is the author
of all history as of all poetry--if not a complete picture, at any rate
a substitute for it.
In this attempt I have not sought to go beyond the epoch of
Diocletian. A summary glance, at the utmost, into the new government
which was then created may fitly form the keystone of this narrative;
to estimate it fully would require a separate narration and another
frame for its setting--an independent historical work, carried out in
the large spirit and with the comprehensive glance of Gibbon, but with
a more accurate understanding of details. Italy and its islands have
been excluded; for the account of these cannot be dissociated from
that of the general government of the empire. The external history,
as it is called, of the imperial period is dealt with as an integral
part of the provincial administration; what we should call imperial
wars were not carried on under the empire against those outside of
its pale, although the conflicts called forth by the rounding off, or
the defence, of the frontier sometimes assumed such proportions as
to make them seem wars between two powers similar in kind, and the
collapse of the Roman rule in the middle of the third century, which
for some decades seemed as though it were to become its definitive end,
grew out of the unhappy conduct of frontier-defence at several places
simultaneously. Our narrative opens with the great work of pushing
forward, and of regulating the frontier towards the north, which was
partly carried out and partly failed under Augustus. At other points
we bring together the events that occurred on each of the three chief
arenas for frontier-defence--the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates. The
remainder of the narrative is arranged according to provinces. Charms
of detail, pictures of feeling, sketches of character, it has none to
offer; it is allowable for the artist, but not for the historian, to
reproduce the features of Arminius. With self-denial this book has been
written; and with self-denial let it be read.
CHAPTER I.
THE NORTHERN FRONTIER OF ITALY.
[Sidenote: Northern boundary of the empire.]
The Roman Republic extended its territory chiefly by means of the sea
towards the west, south, and east: little was done towards extending
it in the direction, in which Italy and the two peninsulas dependent
upon it to the west and east are connected with the great mainland of
Europe. The region which lay behind Macedonia was not subject to the
Romans, nor yet even the northern slope of the Alps; only the inland
region behind the south coast of Gaul had been annexed by Caesar to
the empire. Looking to the position occupied by the empire in general,
this state of things could not be allowed to continue; the fact that
the inert and unstable rule of the aristocracy had been superseded
could not but tell with preeminent effect in this sphere of action.
Caesar had not charged the heirs of his dictatorial power with the
extension of Roman territory on the north slope of the Alps and on the
right bank of the Rhine so directly as with the conquest of Britain;
but in reality such an enlargement of the bounds suggested itself
far more naturally, and was more necessary, than the subduing of the
transmarine Celts, and we can readily understand why Augustus took
in hand the former and omitted the latter. The task was divided into
three great sections--the operations on the northern frontier of the
Graeco-Macedonian peninsula, in the region of the middle and lower
Danube, in Illyricum; those on the northern frontier of Italy itself,
in the region of the upper Danube, in Raetia and Noricum; lastly,
those on the right bank of the Rhine, in Germany. Though conducted
for the most part independently, the military political measures in
these regions had yet an inward connection; and, as they all had their
origin from the free initiative of the Roman government, they can only
be understood in their success or in their partial failure, when they
are looked at from a military and political point of view as a whole.
We shall, therefore, in our account of them, follow the connection of
place rather than the order of time; the structure, of which they are
but parts, is better viewed in its internal compactness than according
to the succession of the several buildings composing it.
[Sidenote: Dalmatian war.]
The prelude to this great aggregate of action was formed by the
measures which Caesar the Younger, so soon as he had his hands free
in Italy and Spain, undertook on the upper coasts of the Adriatic and
in the inland region adjacent to them. In the hundred and fifty years
that had elapsed since the founding of Aquileia, the Roman merchant
had doubtless from that centre possessed himself more and more of the
traffic; yet the state, directly as such, had made little progress.
Considerable trading settlements had been formed at the chief ports of
the Dalmatian coast, and also, on the road leading from Aquileia into
the valley of the Save, at Nauportus (Upper Laybach); Dalmatia, Bosnia,
Istria, and Carniola were deemed Roman territory, and the region along
the coast at least was actually subject; but the founding of towns in a
legal sense still remained to be done, quite as much as the subduing of
the inhospitable interior.
Here, however, another element had to be taken into account. In the
war between Caesar and Pompeius the native Dalmatians had as decidedly
taken part for the latter as the Roman settlers there had taken the
side of Caesar; even after the defeat of Pompeius at Pharsalus, and
after the Pompeian fleet had been driven from the Illyrian waters (iv.
456) {iv. 434.}, the natives continued their resistance with energy
and success. The brave and able Publius Vatinius, who had formerly
taken a very effective part in these conflicts, was sent with a strong
army to Illyricum, apparently in the year before Caesar's death,
and that merely as the vanguard of the main army, with which the
Dictator himself intended to follow in order to overthrow the Dacians,
who just then were putting forth their rising power (iv. 305) {iv.
291.}, and to regulate the state of affairs in the whole domain of
the Danube. The execution of this plan was precluded by the daggers
of the assassins. It was fortunate that the Dacians did not on their
part penetrate into Macedonia; Vatinius himself fought against the
Dalmatians unsuccessfully, and sustained severe losses. Thereafter,
when the republicans took up arms in the East, the Illyrian army joined
that of Brutus, and for a considerable time the Dalmatians remained
free from attack. After the overthrow of the republicans, Antonius, to
whom, in the partition of the empire, Macedonia had fallen, caused the
insubordinate Dardani in the north-west and the Parthini on the coast
(eastward from Durazzo) to be put to rout in the year 715 {39.}, when
the celebrated orator Gaius Asinius Pollio gained triumphal honours.
In Illyricum, which was under Caesar, nothing could be done so long as
the latter had to direct his whole power to the Sicilian war against
Sextus Pompeius; but after its successful termination Caesar personally
threw himself with vigour into this task. The small tribes from Doclea
(Cernagora), as far as the Iapydes (near Fiume), were in the first
campaign (719) {35.} either brought back to subjection or now for the
first time subdued. It was not a great war with pitched battles of
note, but the mountain-conflicts with the brave and desperate tribes,
and the capture of the strongholds furnished in part with Roman
appliances of war, formed no easy task; in none of his wars did Caesar
display to an equal extent his own energy and personal valour. After
the toilsome subjugation of the territory of the Iapydes, he marched
in the very same year along the valley of the Kulpa to the point where
it joins the Save; the strong place Siscia (Sziszek) situated at that
point, the chief place of arms of the Pannonians, against which the
Romans had never hitherto advanced with success, was now occupied and
destined as a basis for the war against the Dacians, which Caesar
purposed next to undertake. In the two following years (720, 721)
{34, 33.}, the Dalmatians, who had for a number of years been in arms
against the Romans, were forced to submit after the fall of their
fortress Promona (Promina, near Dernis, above Sebenico). Still more
important than these military successes was the work of peace, which
was carried on about the same time, and which they were intended to
secure. It was doubtless in these years that the ports along the
Istrian and Dalmatian coast, so far as they lay within the field of
Caesar's rule, Tergeste (Trieste), Pola, Iader (Zara), Salonae (near
Spalato), Narona (at the mouth of the Narenta), as well as Emona
(Laybach), beyond the Alps, on the route from Aquileia over the Julian
Alps to the Save, obtained, through Caesar's successor, some of them
town-walls, all of them town-rights. The places themselves had probably
all been already long in existence as Roman villages; but it was at any
rate of essential importance that they were now inserted on a footing
of equal privilege among the Italian _municipia_.
[Sidenote: Preparation for the Dacian war.]
The Dacian war was intended to follow; but the civil war stepped in
before it a second time. It summoned the ruler not to Illyricum, but
to the East, and the heavings of the great decisive struggle between
Caesar and Antonius reached even to the distant region of the Danube.
The people of the Dacians, united and purified by king Burebista
(Boerebistas, iv. 305) {iv. 291.}, now under king Cotiso, found itself
courted by the two antagonists--Caesar was even accused of having
sought the king's daughter in marriage, and having offered to him
in turn the hand of his five-year-old daughter Julia. It is easy to
understand how the Dacian should, in view of the invasion planned by
the father and ushered in by the son with the fortification of Siscia,
have attached himself to the side of Antonius; and had he done what
people in Rome feared--had he, while Caesar was fighting in the East,
penetrated from the north into defenceless Italy; or had Antonius, in
accordance with the proposal of the Dacians, sought the decision of the
struggle not in Epirus but in Macedonia, and drawn thither the Dacian
bands to help him, the fortunes of the war might perhaps have ended
otherwise. But neither the one nor the other took place; moreover,
at that very time the Dacian state, created by the vigorous hand of
Burebista, again went to pieces; internal troubles, perhaps also the
attacks from the north by the Germanic Bastarnae and by the Sarmatian
tribes that subsequently environed Dacia on all sides, prevented the
Dacians from interfering in the Roman civil war, in the decision of
which their future also was at stake.
Immediately after that war was decided, Caesar set himself to regulate
the state of things on the lower Danube. But, partly because the
Dacians themselves were no longer so much to be dreaded as formerly,
partly because Caesar now ruled no longer merely over Illyricum, but
over the whole Graeco-Macedonian peninsula, the latter became the
primary basis of the Roman operations. Let us picture to ourselves the
peoples, and the relations of the ruling powers, which Augustus found
there.
[Sidenote: Macedonian frontier.]
Macedonia had been for centuries a Roman province. As such, it did not
reach beyond Stobi to the north and the Rhodope mountains to the east;
but the range of Rome's power stretched far beyond the frontier proper
of the country, although varying in compass and not fixed in point of
form. Approximately the Romans seem to have been the leading power at
that time as far as the Haemus (Balkan), while the region beyond the
Balkan as far as the Danube had been possibly trodden by Roman troops,
but was by no means dependent on Rome.[1] Beyond the Rhodope mountains
the Thracian dynasts, who were neighbours to Macedonia, especially
those of the Odrysians (ii. 309) {ii. 290.}, to whom the greatest
portion of the south coast and a part of the coast of the Black Sea
were subject, had been brought by the expedition of Lucullus (iv. 41)
{iv. 39.} under the Roman protectorate; while the inhabitants of the
more inland territories, especially the Bessi on the upper Maritza,
were perhaps called subjects, but were not so, and their incursions
into the settled territory as well as retaliatory expeditions into
theirs were of constant occurrence. Thus, about the year 694 {60.},
Augustus' own father, Gaius Octavius, and in the year 711 {43.}, during
the preparations for the war against the triumvirs, Marcus Brutus had
fought against them. Another Thracian tribe, the Dentheletae (in the
district of Sofia), had, even in Cicero's time, on an incursion into
Macedonia, threatened to besiege its capital Thessalonica. With the
Dardani, the western neighbours of the Thracians, a branch of the
Illyrian family, who inhabited southern Servia and the district of
Prisrend, Curio, the predecessor in office of Lucullus, had fought
successfully; and ten years later Cicero's colleague in the consulate,
Gaius Antonius, unsuccessfully in the year 692 {62.}. Below the
Dardanian territory, again, there were settled close to the Danube
Thracian tribes, the once powerful but now reduced Triballi in the
valley of the Oescus (in the region of Plewna), and farther on, along
both banks of the Danube to its mouth, Dacians, or, as on the right
bank of the river they were usually called by the old national name
which was retained also by their Asiatic kinsmen, Mysians or Moesians,
probably in Burebista's time a part of his kingdom, now once more split
up into different principalities. But the most powerful people between
the Balkan and the Danube at that time were the Bastarnae. We have
already on several occasions met with this brave and numerous race,
the eastmost branch of the great Germanic family (ii. 308) {ii. 290.}.
Settled, strictly speaking, behind the Transdanubian Dacians beyond the
mountains which separate Transylvania from Moldavia, at the mouths of
the Danube and in the wide region from these to the Dniester, they were
themselves outside of the Roman sphere; but from their ranks especially
had both king Philip of Macedonia and king Mithridates of Pontus formed
their armies, and in this way the Romans had often already fought with
them. Now they had crossed the Danube in great masses, and established
themselves north of the Haemus; in so far as the Dacian war, as planned
by Cæsar the father and then by the son, had doubtless for its object
to gain the right bank of the lower Danube, it was not less directed
against them than against the Dacian Moesians on the right bank. The
Greek coast towns in the barbarian land, Odessus (near Varna), Tomis,
Istropolis, hard pressed by these movements of the nations surging
around them, were here as everywhere from the outset clients of the
Romans.
At the time of Caesar's dictatorship, when Burebista was at the height
of his power, the Dacians had executed that fearful devastating raid
along the coast as far down as Apollonia, the traces of which were not
yet obliterated after a century and a half. It may probably have been
this invasion that at first induced Caesar the elder to undertake the
Dacian war; and after that the son now ruled also over Macedonia, he
could not but feel himself under obligation to interfere here at once
and with energy. The defeat which Cicero's colleague, Antonius, had
sustained near Istropolis at the hands of the Bastarnae may be taken as
a proof that these Greeks needed once more the aid of the Romans.
[Sidenote: Subjugation of Moesia by Crassus.]
In fact soon after the battle of Actium (725) {29.} Marcus Licinius
Crassus, the grandson of him who had fallen at Carrhae, was sent by
Caesar to Macedonia as governor, and charged now to carry out the
campaign that had twice been hindered. The Bastarnae, who just then
had invaded Thrace, submitted without resistance, when Crassus had
them summoned to leave the Roman territory; but their retreat was not
sufficient for the Roman. He, on his part, crossed the Haemus,[2] at
the confluence of the Cibrus (Tzibritza) with the Danube, defeated the
enemy, whose king, Deldo, was left on the field of battle; and, with
the help of a Dacian prince adhering to the Romans, took prisoners all
that had escaped from the battle and sought shelter in a neighbouring
stronghold. Without offering further resistance the whole Moesian
territory submitted to the conqueror of the Bastarnae. These returned
next year to avenge the defeat which they had suffered; but they once
more succumbed, and, with them, such of the Moesian tribes as had again
taken up arms. Thus these enemies were once for all expelled from the
right bank of the Danube, and the latter was entirely subjected to
the Roman rule. At the same time the Thracians not hitherto subject
were chastised, the national shrine of Dionysos was taken from the
Bessi, and the administration of it was entrusted to the princes of
the Odrysians, who generally from that time, under the protection
of the Roman supreme power, exercised, or were assumed to exercise,
supremacy over the Thracian tribes south of the Haemus. The Greek
towns, moreover, on the coast of the Black Sea were placed under its
protection, and the rest of the conquered territory was assigned to
various vassal-princes, on whom devolved accordingly, in the first
instance, the protection of the frontier of the empire;[3] Rome had no
legions of her own left for these distant regions. Macedonia thereby
became an inland province, which had no further need of military
administration. The goal, which had been contemplated in those plans of
Dacian warfare, was attained.
Certainly this goal was merely a provisional one. But before Augustus
took in hand the definitive regulation of the northern frontier he
applied himself to reorganise the provinces already belonging to the
empire; more than ten years elapsed over the arrangement of things
in Spain, Gaul, Asia, and Syria. How, when what was needful in these
quarters was done, he set to work on his comprehensive task, we have
now to tell.
[Sidenote: Subjugation of the Alps.]
Italy, which bore sway over three continents, was still, we have
said, by no means absolutely master in her own house. The Alps, which
sheltered her on the north, were in all their extent, from one end
to the other, filled with small and but little civilised tribes of
Illyrian, Raetian, or Celtic nationality, whose territories in part
bordered closely on those of the great towns of the Transpadana--that
of the Trumpilini (Val Trompia) on the town of Brixia; that of the
Camunni (Val Camonica above the Lago d'Iseo) on the town of Bergomum;
that of the Salassi (Val d'Aosta) on Eporedia (Ivrea)--and whose
neighbourhood was by no means wont to be peaceful. Often enough
conquered and proclaimed at the Capitol as vanquished, these tribes, in
spite of the laurels of the men of note that triumphed over them, were
constantly plundering the farmers and the merchants of Upper Italy. The
mischief was not to be checked in earnest until the government resolved
to cross the Alpine chain and bring its northern slope also under their
power; for beyond doubt numbers of these depredators were constantly
streaming over the mountains to pillage the rich adjoining country. In
the direction of Gaul also similar work had to be done; the tribes in
the upper valley of the Rhone (Valais and Vaud) had indeed been subdued
by Caesar, but are also named among those that gave trouble to the
generals of his son. On the other side, the peaceful border-districts
of Gaul complained of the constant incursions of the Raeti. The
numerous expeditions arranged by Augustus on account of these evils do
not admit, or require, historical recital; they are not recorded in
the triumphal Fasti and do not fall under that head, but they gave to
Italy for the first time settled life in the north. We may mention the
subjugation of the already named Camunni in 738 {16.} by the governor
of Illyria, and that of certain Ligurian tribes in the region of Nice
in 740 {14.}, because they show how, even about the middle of the
Augustan age, these insubordinate tribes pressed directly upon Italy.
If the emperor subsequently, in the collective report on his imperial
administration, declared that violence had not been wrongfully employed
by him against any of these small tribes, this must be understood
to the effect that cessions of territory and change of abode were
demanded of them, and they resisted the demand; only the petty cantonal
union formed under king Cottius of Segusio (Susa) submitted without a
struggle to the new arrangement.
[Sidenote: Subjugation of the Raeti.]
The southern slopes and the valleys of the Alps formed the arena of
these conflicts. The establishment of the Romans on the north slope of
the mountains and in the adjoining country to the northward followed
in 739 {15.}. The two step-sons of Augustus reckoned as belonging to
the imperial house, Tiberius the subsequent emperor, and his brother
Drusus, were thereby introduced into the career of generalship for
which they were destined; very secure and very grateful were the
laurels put before them in prospect. Drusus penetrated from Italy up
the valley of the Adige into the Raetian mountains, and achieved here
a first victory; for the farther advance his brother, then governor of
Gaul, lent him a helping hand from Helvetia; on the lake of Constance
itself the Roman triremes defeated the boats of the Vindelici; on
the emperor's day, the 1st August 739 {15.}, in the vicinity of the
sources of the Danube, fought the last battle, whereby Raetia and
the land of the Vindelici--that is, the Tyrol, East Switzerland, and
Bavaria--became thenceforth constituent parts of the Roman empire. The
emperor Augustus had gone in person to Gaul to superintend the war and
the organisation of the new province. At the point where the Alps abut
on the Gulf of Genoa, on the height above Monaco, a monument commanding
a wide prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea, and not even yet wholly effaced,
was erected some years later by grateful Italy to the emperor Augustus,
because under his government all the Alpine tribes from the Upper to
the Lower Sea--the inscription enumerates forty-six of them--had been
brought under the power of the Roman people. It was no more than the
simple truth; and this war was what war ought to be--the guardian and
the guarantee of peace.
[Sidenote: Organisation of Raetia.]
A task more difficult doubtless than that of the war proper was
the organisation of the new territory; the more especially as
considerations of internal policy exerted to some extent a very
disturbing influence on it. Since, as things stood, the preponderance
of military power might not be located in Italy, the government had
to take care that the great military commands were removed as far
as possible from its immediate vicinity; indeed one of the motives
that conduced to the occupation of Raetia itself was the desire to
remove the command, which probably up to this time could not have
been dispensed with in Upper Italy itself, definitively away from
that region, as was thereupon actually done. It might most naturally
have been expected that there would be created on the north slope of
the Alps a great centre for the military posts indispensable in the
newly acquired territory; but a course the very opposite of this was
followed. Between Italy on the one hand, and the great commands on
the Rhine and Danube on the other, there was drawn a girdle of small
governorships, which were not merely all filled up by the emperor, but
were also filled up throughout with men not belonging to the senate.
Italy and the province of southern Gaul were separated by the three
small military districts of the Maritime Alps (department of the
Maritime Alps and the province of Cuneo), the Cottian Alps with Segusio
(Susa) as its chief town, and probably the Graian Alps (East Savoy).
Among these the second, administered by the already named cantonal
prince, Cottius, and his descendants for a time under the form of
clientship,[4] was of most importance, but they all possessed a certain
military power, and were primarily destined to maintain public safety
in the territory concerned, and above all on the important imperial
highways traversing it. The upper valley of the Rhone again--that
is, the Valais, and the newly conquered Raetia--were placed under a
commander of higher standing not in rank, but doubtless in power; a
corps, relatively speaking, considerable was here for the time being
indispensably requisite. In order, however, to provide for its being
diminished as far as possible, Raetia was in great measure depopulated
by the removal of its inhabitants. The circuit was closed by the
similarly organised province of Noricum, embracing the largest part of
what is now German Austria. This wide and fertile region had submitted
without substantial resistance to the Roman rule, probably in the form
of a dependent principality established in the first instance, but with
its prince erelong giving place to the imperial procurator, from whom,
for that matter, he did not essentially differ. Some, at all events,
of the Rhenish and Danubian legions had their fixed quarters in the
immediate neighbourhood, on the one hand of the Raetian frontier at
Vindonissa, on the other of the Norican frontier at Poetovio, obviously
to keep in check the adjoining province; but in that intermediate
region as little were there armies of the first rank with legions under
senatorial generals, as there were senatorial governors. The distrust
towards the corporation governing the state alongside of the emperor
finds very forcible expression in this arrangement.
[Sidenote: Roads and colonies in the Alps.]
Next to the protection of the peace of Italy the chief aim of this
organisation was to secure its communications with the north, which
were of not less urgent importance for traffic than in a military
point of view. With special energy Augustus took up this task; and he
doubtless deserved that his name should still live at the present day
in those of Aosta and Augsburg, perhaps also in that of the Julian
Alps. The old coast-road, which Augustus partly renewed, partly
constructed, from the Ligurian coast through Gaul and Spain to the
Atlantic Ocean, can only have served purposes of traffic. The road
also over the Cottian Alps, already opened up by Pompeius (iv. 28)
{iv. 27.}, was finished under Augustus by the already mentioned prince
of Susa, and named after him; in like manner a trading route, it
connects Italy, by way of Turin and Susa, with the commercial capital
of south Gaul, Arelate. But the military line proper--the direct
connection between Italy and the camps on the Rhine--led through the
valley of the Dora Baltea from Italy partly to Lyons the capital of
Gaul, partly to the Rhine. While the republic had confined itself
to bringing into its power the entrance of that valley by founding
Eporedia (Ivrea), Augustus possessed himself of it entirely by not
merely subjugating its inhabitants--the still restless Salassi, with
whom he had already fought during the Dalmatian war--but extirpating
them outright; 36,000 of them, including 8000 fighting men, were sold
under the hammer into slavery in the market-place of Eporedia, and
the purchasers were bound not to grant freedom to any of them within
twenty years. The camp itself, from which his general Varro Murena had
achieved their final defeat in 729 {25.}, became the fortress, which,
occupied by 3000 settlers taken from the imperial guard, was to secure
the communications--the town Augusta Praetoria, the modern Aosta,
whose walls and gates then erected are still standing. It commanded
subsequently two Alpine routes, as well that which led over the Graian
Alps or Little St. Bernard, along the upper Isère and the Rhone to
Lyons, as that which ran over the Poenine Alps, the Great St. Bernard,
to the valley of the Rhone and to the Lake of Geneva, and thence into
the valleys of the Aar and the Rhine. But it was for the first of these
roads that the town was designed, as it originally had only gates
leading east and west; nor could this be otherwise, for the fortress
was built ten years before the occupation of Raetia; in those years,
moreover, the later organisation of the camps on the Rhine was not yet
in existence, and the direct connection between the capitals of Italy
and Gaul was altogether of the foremost importance. In the direction
of the Danube we have already mentioned the laying out of Emona on the
upper Save, on the old trade-road from Aquileia over the Julian Alps
into the Pannonian territory. This road was at the same time the chief
artery for the military communication of Italy with the region of the
Danube. Lastly, with the conquest of Raetia was connected the opening
of the route which led from the last Italian town Tridentum (Trent),
up the Adige valley, to the newly established Augusta in the land of
the Vindelici, the modern Augsburg, and onward to the upper Danube.
Subsequently, when the son of the general who had first opened up this
region came to reign, this road received the name of the Claudian
highway.[5] It furnished the means of connection, indispensable from a
military point of view, between Raetia and Italy; but in consequence of
the comparatively small importance of the Raetian army, and doubtless
also in consequence of the more difficult communication, it never had
the same importance as the route of Aosta.
The Alpine passes and the north slope of the Alps were thus in
secure possession of the Romans. Beyond the Alps there stretched
to the east of the Rhine the land of the Germans; to the south of
the Danube that of the Pannonians and the Moesians. Here, too, soon
after the occupation of Raetia, the offensive was taken, and nearly
contemporaneously in both directions. Let us look first at what
occurred on the Danube.
[Sidenote: Erection of Illyricum.]
The Danubian region, to all appearance up to 727 {27.} administered
along with Upper Italy, became then, on the reorganisation of the
empire, an independent administrative district, Illyricum, under
a governor of its own. It consisted of Dalmatia, with the country
behind it, as far as the Drin--while the coast farther to the south
had for long belonged to the province of Macedonia--and of the Roman
possessions in the land of the Pannonians on the Save. The region
between the Haemus and the Danube as far as the Black Sea, which
Crassus had shortly before brought into dependence on the empire,
as well as Noricum and Raetia, stood in a relation of clientship to
Rome, and so did not belong as such to this province, but withal were
primarily dependent on the governor of Illyricum. Thrace, north of the
Haemus, still by no means pacified, fell, from a military point of
view, to the same district. It was a continued effect of the original
organisation, and one which subsisted down to a late period, that the
whole region of the Danube from Raetia to Moesia was comprehended
as a customs-district under the name Illyricum in the wider sense.
Legions were stationed only in Illyricum proper, in the other districts
there were probably no imperial troops at all, or at the utmost small
detachments; the chief command was held by the proconsul of the new
province coming from the senate; while the soldiers and officers were,
as a matter of course, imperial. It attests the serious character of
the offensive beginning after the conquest of Raetia, that in the first
instance the co-ruler Agrippa took over the command in the region
of the Danube, to whom the proconsul of Illyricum had to become _de
iure_ subordinate; and then, when Agrippa's sudden death in the spring
of 742 {12.} broke down this combination, Illyricum in the following
year passed into imperial administration, and the imperial generals
obtained the chief commands in it. Soon three military centres were
here formed, which thereupon brought about the administrative division
of the Danubian region into three parts. The small principalities
in the territory conquered by Crassus gave place to the province of
Moesia, the governor of which henceforth, in what is now Servia and
Bulgaria, guarded the frontier against the Dacians and Bastarnae.
In what had hitherto been the province of Illyricum, a part of the
legionaries was posted on the Kerka and the Cettina, to keep in check
the still troublesome Dalmatians. The chief force was stationed in
Pannonia, on what was then the boundary of the empire, the Save. This
distribution of the legions and organisation of the provinces cannot
be fixed with chronological precision; probably the serious wars which
were waged simultaneously against the Pannonians and the Thracians, of
which we have immediately to speak, led in the first instance to the
institution of the governorship of Moesia, and it was not till some
time later that the Dalmatian legions and those on the Save obtained
commanders-in-chief of their own.
[Sidenote: First Pannonian war of Tiberius.]
As the expeditions against the Pannonians and the Germans were, as it
were, a repetition of the Raetian campaign on a more extended scale,
so the leaders, who were put at their head with the title of imperial
legates, were the same--once more the two princes of the imperial
house, Tiberius, who, in the place of Agrippa, took up the command
in Illyricum, and Drusus, who went to the Rhine, both now no longer
inexperienced youths, but men in the prime of their years, and well
fitted to take in hand severe work.
Immediate pretexts for the waging of war in the region of the Danube
were not wanting. Marauders from Pannonia, and even from the peaceful
Noricum, carried pillage in the year 738 {16.} as far as Istria. Two
years thereafter the Illyrian provincials took up arms against their
masters, and, although they returned to obedience without offering
opposition when Agrippa took over the command in the autumn of 741
{13.}, yet immediately after his death the disturbances are alleged
to have begun afresh. We cannot say how far these Roman accounts
correspond to the truth; certainly the pushing forward of the Roman
frontier, required by the general political situation, formed the real
motive and aim of the war. As to the three campaigns of Tiberius in
Pannonia from 742 to 744 {12 to 10.} we are very imperfectly informed.
Their result was stated by the government as the establishment of
the Danube as the boundary for the province of Illyricum. That this
river was thenceforth looked upon in its whole course as the boundary
of Roman territory, is doubtless correct; but a subjugation in the
proper sense, or even an occupation, of the whole of this wide domain
by no means took place at that time. The chief resistance to Tiberius
was offered by the tribes already at an earlier date declared Roman,
especially by the Dalmatians; among those first effectively subdued
at that time, the most noted was that of the Pannonian Breuci on the
lower Save. The Roman armies, during these campaigns, probably did
not cross the Drave, and did not in any case transfer their standing
camp to the Danube. The region between the Save and Drave was at all
events occupied, and the headquarters of the Illyrian northern army
were transferred from Siscia on the Save to Poetovio (Pettau) on the
middle Drave, while in the Norican region recently occupied the Roman
garrisons reached as far as the Danube at Carnuntum (Petronell, near
Vienna), at that time the last Norican town towards the east. The wide
and vast region between the Drave and the Danube, which now forms
western Hungary, was to all appearance at that time not even militarily
occupied. This was in keeping with the whole plan of the offensive
operations that were begun; the object sought was to be in touch with
the Gallic army, and for the new imperial frontier in the north-east
the natural base was not Buda, but Vienna.
[Sidenote: Thracian war of Piso.]
Complementary in some measure to this Pannonian expedition of Tiberius
was that which was simultaneously undertaken against the Thracians by
Lucius Piso, perhaps the first governor that Moesia had of its own. The
two great neighbouring nations, the Illyrians and the Thracians, of
whom we shall treat more fully in a subsequent chapter, stood alike at
that time in need of subjugation. The tribes of inland Thrace showed
themselves still more obstinate than the Illyrians, and far from
subordinate to the kings set over them by Rome; in 738 {16.} a Roman
army had to advance thither and come to the help of the princes against
the Bessi. If we had more exact accounts of the conflicts waged in
the one quarter as in the other in the years 741 to 743 {13 to 11.},
the contemporary action of the Thracians and Illyrians would perhaps
appear as concerted. Certain it is that the mass of the Thracian tribes
south of the Haemus and presumably also those settled in Moesia took
part in this national war, and that the resistance of the Thracians
was not less obstinate than that of the Illyrians. It was for them at
the same time a religious war; the shrine of Dionysos,[6] taken from
the Bessi and assigned to the Odrysian princes well disposed to Rome,
was not forgotten; a priest of this Dionysos stood at the head of the
insurrection, and it was directed in the first instance against those
Odrysian princes. One of them was taken and put to death, the other
was driven away; the insurgents, in part armed and disciplined after
the Roman model, were victors in the first engagement over Piso, and
penetrated as far as Macedonia and into the Thracian Chersonese; fears
were entertained for Asia. Ultimately, however, Roman discipline
gained the superiority over these brave opponents; in several campaigns
Piso mastered the resistance, and the command of Moesia, instituted
either already on this occasion or soon afterwards on "the Thracian
shore," broke up the connection of the Daco-Thracian peoples, by
separating the tribes on the left bank of the Danube and their kinsmen
south of the Haemus from each other, and permanently secured the Roman
rule in the region of the lower Danube.
[Sidenote: Attack of the Germans.]
[Sidenote: Defeat of Lollius.]
The Germans still more than the Pannonians and the Thracians gave
the Romans occasion to feel that the existing state of things could
not permanently continue. The boundary of the empire since Caesar's
time had been the Rhine from the lake of Constance to its mouth (iv.
258) {iv. 247.}. It was not a demarcation of peoples, for already
of old in the north-east of Gaul the Celts had on various occasions
mingled with Germans, the Treveri and Nervii would at least gladly
have been Germans (iv. 244) {iv. 233.}, and on the middle Rhine
Caesar himself had provided settlements for the remnant of the hosts
of Ariovistus--Triboci (in Alsace) Nemetes (about Spires), Vangiones
(about Worms). Those Germans on the left of the Rhine indeed adhered
more firmly to the Roman rule than the Celtic cantons, and it was not
they that opened the gates of Gaul to their countrymen on the right
bank. But these, long accustomed to predatory raids over the river
and by no means forgetting the half successful attempts on several
occasions to settle there, came unbidden. The only Germanic tribe
beyond the Rhine, which already in Caesar's time had separated from
their countrymen and placed themselves under Roman protection, the
Ubii, had to give way before the hatred of their exasperated kinsmen
and to seek protection and new abodes on the Roman bank (716) {38.};
Agrippa, although personally present in Gaul, had not been able,
amidst the pressure of the Sicilian war then impending, to help
them otherwise, and had crossed the Rhine merely to effect their
transference. From this settlement of theirs our Cologne subsequently
grew up. Not merely were the Romans trading on the right bank of the
Rhine subjected to various injuries by the Germans, so that even in
729 {25.} an advance over the Rhine was executed, and Agrippa in 734
{20.} had to expel from Gaul Germanic hordes that had come thither from
the Rhine; but in 738 {16.} the further bank was affected by a more
general movement, which terminated in an invasion on a great scale. The
Sugambri on the Ruhr took the lead, and with them their neighbours the
Usipes on the north in the valley of the Lippe, and the Tencteri on the
south; they attacked the Roman traders sojourning among them and nailed
them to the cross, then crossed the Rhine, pillaged the Gallic cantons
far and wide, and, when the governor of Germany sent the legate Marcus
Lollius with the fifth legion against them, they first cut off its
cavalry and then put the legion itself to disgraceful flight, on which
occasion even its eagle fell into their hands. After all this they
returned unassailed to their homes. This miscarriage of the Roman army,
though not of importance in itself, was not to be despised in presence
of the Germanic movement and even of the troublesome feeling in Gaul;
Augustus himself went to the province attacked, and this occurrence
may possibly have been the immediate occasion for the adoption of that
great movement of offence, which, beginning with the Raetian war in 739
{15.}, led on to the campaigns of Tiberius in Illyricum and of Drusus
in Germany.
[Sidenote: German war of Drusus.]
Nero Claudius Drusus, born in 716 {38.} by Livia in the house of her
new husband, afterwards Augustus, and loved and treated by the latter
like a son--evil tongues said, as his son--the very image of manly
beauty and of winning grace in converse, a brave soldier and an able
general, a pronounced panegyrist, moreover, of the old republican
system, and in every respect the most popular prince of the imperial
house, took up, on the return of Augustus to Italy (741) {13.}, the
administration of Gaul and the chief command against the Germans,
whose subjugation was now contemplated in earnest. We have no adequate
means of knowing either the strength of the army then stationed on the
Rhine, or how matters stood with the Germans; this much only is clear
that the latter were not in a position suitably to meet the compact
attack. The region of the Neckar formerly possessed by the Helvetii
(iii. 182) {iii. 173.}, then for long a debateable border-land between
them and the Germans, lay desolate and dominated on the one side by the
recently subdued district of the Vindelici, on the other side by the
Germans friendly to Rome about Strassburg, Spires, and Worms. Farther
northward, in the region of the upper Main, were settled the Marcomani,
perhaps the most powerful of the Suebian tribes, but from of old at
enmity with the Germans of the middle Rhine. Northward of the Main
followed first in the Taunus the Chatti, farther down the Rhine the
already named Tencteri, Sugambri, and Usipes; behind them the powerful
Cherusci on the Weser, besides a number of tribes of secondary rank.
As it was these tribes on the middle Rhine, with the Sugambri at their
head, that had carried out that attack on Roman Gaul, the retaliatory
expedition of Drusus was directed mainly against them, and they too
combined for joint resistance to Drusus and for the institution of a
national army to be formed from the contingents of all these cantons.
The Frisian tribes, however, on the coast of the North Sea did not join
the movement, but persevered in their peculiar isolation.
It was the Germans who assumed the offensive. The Sugambri and their
allies again seized all the Romans whom they could lay hold of on their
bank, and nailed to the cross the centurions among them, twenty in
number. The allied tribes resolved once more to invade Gaul, and even
divided the spoil beforehand--the Sugambri were to obtain the people,
the Cherusci the horses, the Suebian tribes the gold and silver. So
they attempted in the beginning of 742 {12.} again to cross the Rhine,
and hoped for the support of the Germans on the left bank of the river,
and even for an insurrection of the Gallic cantons just at that time
excited by the unwonted matter of the census. But the young general
took his measures well; he nipped the movement in the Roman territory
before it was well set agoing, drove back the invaders even as they
were crossing the river, and then crossed the stream on his own part,
in order to lay waste the territory of the Usipes and Sugambri. This
was a repulse for the time; the plan of the war proper, designed on a
grander scale, started from the acquisition of the North Sea coast and
of the mouths of the Ems and the Elbe. The numerous and valiant tribe
of the Batavi in the delta of the Rhine was soon incorporated--to all
appearance, at that time and by amicable concert--in the Roman empire;
with its help a communication by water was established from the Rhine
to the Zuyder See, and from the latter to the North Sea, which opened
up for the Rhine-fleet a safer and shorter way to the mouths of the Ems
and Elbe. The Frisians on the north coast followed the example of the
Batavi and likewise submitted to the foreign rule. It was doubtless
still more the moderate policy than the military preponderance of
the Romans, which paved the way for them here; these tribes remained
almost wholly exempt from tribute, and were drawn upon for war-service
in a way which did not alarm, but allured them. From this basis the
expedition proceeded along the coast of the North Sea; in the open
sea the island of Burchanis (perhaps Borchum off East Friesland) was
taken by assault; on the Ems the fleet of boats of the Bructeri was
vanquished by the Roman fleet; Drusus reached as far as the Chauci
at the mouth of the Weser. The fleet indeed on its return homewards
encountered dangerous and unknown shallows, and, but for the Frisians
affording a safe escort to the shipwrecked army, it would have been
in a very critical position. Nevertheless, by this first campaign the
coast from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Weser had been gained
for Rome.
[Sidenote: Death of Drusus.]
After the coast was thus acquired, the subjugation of the interior
began in the next year (743) {11.}. It was materially facilitated by
the dissensions among the Germans of the middle Rhine. For the attack
on Gaul attempted in the previous year the Chatti had not furnished
the promised contingent; in natural, but still far from politic, anger
the Sugambri had suddenly assailed the land of the Chatti with all
their force, and so their own territory as well as that of their
next neighbours on the Rhine was occupied without difficulty by the
Romans. The Chatti thereupon submitted to the enemies of their enemies
without resistance; nevertheless, they were directed to evacuate the
bank of the Rhine and to occupy instead of it that district which the
Sugambri had hitherto possessed. Not less did the powerful Cherusci
farther inland on the middle Weser succumb. The Chauci settled on the
lower stream were now assailed by land as they had been before by sea;
and thus the whole territory between the Rhine and Weser was taken
possession of, at least at the places of decisive military importance.
The return was, indeed, just as in the previous year, on the point
of being almost fatal; at Arbalo (site unknown) the Romans found
themselves surrounded on all sides in a narrow defile by the Germans
and deprived of their communications; but the firm discipline of the
legions, and the arrogant confidence of success withal on the part of
the Germans, changed the threatened defeat into a brilliant victory.[7]
In the next year (744) {10.} the Chatti revolted, indignant at the
loss of their old beautiful home; but now they for their part remained
alone, and were, after an obstinate resistance, and not without
considerable loss, subdued by the Romans (745) {9.}. The Marcomani on
the upper Main, who after the occupation of the territory of the Chatti
were next exposed to the attack, gave way before it, and retired into
the land of the Boii, the modern Bohemia, without interfering from
this point, where they were removed beyond the immediate sphere of
the Roman power, in the conflicts on the Rhine. In the whole region
between the Rhine and Weser the war was at an end. Drusus was able
in 745 {9.} to set foot on the right bank of the Weser in the canton
of the Cherusci, and to advance thence to the Elbe, which he did not
cross, and presumably was instructed not to do so. Several severe
combats took place; successful resistance was nowhere offered. But on
the return-march, which led apparently up the Saale and thence to
the Weser, a severe blow befell the Romans, not through the enemy but
through an incalculable misfortune. The general fell with his horse
and broke his thigh-bone; after thirty days of suffering he expired
in the distant land between the Saale and Weser,[8] which had never
before been trodden by a Roman army, in the arms of his brother who
had hastened thither from Rome, in the thirtieth year of his age and
in the full consciousness of his vigour and of his successes, long and
deeply lamented by his adherents and the whole people--perhaps to be
pronounced fortunate, because the gods granted to him to depart from
life young, and to escape the disillusions and embitterments which tell
most painfully on those highest in station, while his brilliant and
heroic figure continues still to live in the remembrance of the world.
[Sidenote: Continuance of the war by Tiberius.]
In the course of things, as a whole, the death of the able general
made--as might be expected--no change. His brother Tiberius arrived
early enough not merely to close his eyes, but also with his firm
hand to bring the army back and to carry on the conquest of Germany.
He commanded there during the two following years (746, 747) {8, 7.},
in the course of which there were no conflicts on a larger scale, but
the Roman troops showed themselves far and wide between the Rhine and
Elbe, and when Tiberius made the demand that all the countries should
formally acknowledge the Roman rule, and at the same time declared
that he could only accept that acknowledgment from all the cantons
simultaneously, they complied without exception; last of all the
Sugambri, for whom indeed there was no real peace. What progress in
a military point of view had been made, is shown by the expedition,
falling a little later, of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. The latter was
able, as governor of Illyricum, probably from Vindelicia as a basis,
to assign to a restless horde of Hermunduri settlements in the land
of the Marcomani itself; and on this expedition he reached as far as,
and beyond, the upper Elbe, without meeting with resistance.[9] The
Marcomani in Bohemia were completely isolated, and the rest of Germany
between the Rhine and Elbe was a Roman province--though still by no
means reduced to tranquillity.
[Sidenote: Camp on the left bank of the Rhine.]
Of the military-political organisation of Germany, as at that time
planned, we have but a very imperfect knowledge, because, on the
one hand, there is an utter want of accurate information as to the
arrangements made in earlier times to protect the Gallic eastern
frontier, and, on the other hand, those made by the two brothers were
in great part destroyed by the subsequent development of affairs.
There was no attempt to move the Roman frontier-guard away from the
Rhine; to this matters might perhaps come, but they had not yet done
so. Just as was the case in Illyricum at that time with the Danube,
the Elbe was doubtless the political boundary of the empire, but the
Rhine was the line of frontier-defence, and from the camps on the
Rhine the connections in rear ran to the great towns of Gaul and to
its ports.[10] The great headquarters during these campaigns was
what was afterwards named the "Old Camp," Castra vetera, (Birten near
Xanten), the first considerable height below Bonn on the left bank
of the Rhine, from a military point of view corresponding nearly to
the modern Wesel on the right. This place, occupied perhaps since
the beginning of the Roman rule on the Rhine, had been instituted by
Augustus as a stronghold for curbing Germany; and, if the fortress
was at all times the basis for the Roman defensive on the left bank
of the Rhine, it was not less well chosen for the invasion of the
right, situated, as it was, opposite to the mouth of the Lippe which
was navigable far up, and connected with the right bank by a strong
bridge. The counterpart to this "Old Camp," at the mouth of the Lippe
was probably formed by that at the mouth of the Main, Mogontiacum, the
modern Mentz, to all appearance a creation of Drusus; at least the
already mentioned cessions of territory imposed on the Chatti, as well
as the constructions in the Taunus to be mentioned further on, show
that Drusus clearly perceived the military importance of the line of
the Main, and thus also that of its key on the left bank of the Rhine.
If the legionary camp on the Aar was, as it would seem, instituted to
keep the Raeti and Vindelici to their obedience (p. 18), it may be
presumed to have been laid out about this time; but then it had merely
an outward connection with the Gallico-German military arrangements.
The legionary camp at Strassburg hardly reaches back to so early a
time. The line from Mentz to Wesel formed the basis of the Roman
military dispositions. That Drusus and Tiberius had--apart from the
Narbonese province which was then no longer imperial--the governorship
of all Gaul as well as the command of all the Rhenish legions, is an
ascertained point; apart from these princes, the civil administration
of Gaul may at that time perhaps have been separated from the command
of the troops on the Rhine, but scarcely was the latter thus early
divided into two co-ordinate commands.[11]
[Sidenote: Positions on the right bank of the Rhine.]
Correlative to these military arrangements on the left bank of the
Rhine were those adopted on the right. In the first place the Romans
took possession of the right bank itself. This step affected above all
the Sugambri, in whose case certainly retaliation for the captured
eagle and the crucified centurions contributed to it. The envoys sent
to declare their submission, the most eminent men of the nation,
were, at variance with the law of nations, treated as prisoners of
war, and perished miserably in the Italian fortresses. Of the mass of
the people, 40,000 were removed from their homes and settled in the
north of Gaul, where they subsequently, perhaps, meet us under the
name of the Cugerni. Only a small and harmless remnant of the powerful
tribe was allowed to remain in their old abodes. Suebian bands were
also transferred to Gaul, other tribes were pushed farther into the
interior, such as the Marsi and doubtless also the Chatti; on the
middle Rhine the native population of the right bank was everywhere
dislodged or at any rate weakened. Along this bank of the Rhine,
moreover, fortified posts, fifty in number, were instituted. In front
of Mogontiacum the territory taken from the Chatti, thenceforth the
canton of the Mattiaci near the modern Wiesbaden, was brought within
the Roman lines, and the height of Taunus strongly fortified.[12] But
above all the line of the Lippe was taken possession of from Vetera;
of the two military roads furnished at intervals of a day's march
with forts, on the two banks of the river, the one on the right bank
at least is as certainly the work of Drusus as the fortress of Aliso
in the district of the sources of the Lippe, probably the present
village of Elsen, not far from Paderborn,[13] is attested to have been
so. Moreover, there was the already mentioned canal from the mouth
of the Rhine to the Zuider See, and a dyke drawn by Lucius Domitius
Ahenobarbus through the marshy flat country between the Ems and the
lower Rhine--the so-called "long bridges." Besides, there were detached
Roman posts scattered through the whole region; such are subsequently
mentioned among the Frisians and the Chauci, and in this sense it may
be correct that the Roman garrisons reached as far as the Weser and
the Elbe. Lastly, the army encamped in winter, no doubt, on the Rhine;
but in summer, even though no expeditions properly so called were
undertaken, uniformly in the conquered country, as a rule near Aliso.
[Sidenote: Organisation of the province Germany.]
The Romans, however, did not make mere military arrangements in the
newly acquired domain. The Germans were urged, like other provincials,
to have law administered to them by the Roman governor, and the summer
expeditions of the general gradually developed into the usual judicial
circuits of the governor. The accusation and defence of the accused
took place in the Latin language; the Roman advocates and legal
assessors began, on the right as on the left side of the Rhine, their
operations, sorely felt everywhere, but here deeply exasperating to
the barbarians, who were unaccustomed to such things. Much was lacking
to the full carrying out of the provincial organisation; a formal
assessment of taxation, a regulated levy for the Roman army, were not
yet thought of. But as the new cantonal union had just been instituted
in Gaul in connection with the divine adoration of the monarch there
introduced, a similar arrangement was made also in the new Germany.
When Drusus consecrated for Gaul the altar of Augustus at Lyons, the
Germans last settled on the left bank of the Rhine, the Ubii, were not
received into this union; but in their chief place, which, as regards
position, was for Germany nearly what Lyons was for the three Gauls, a
similar altar for the Germanic cantons was erected, the priesthood of
which was, in the year 9, administered by the young Cheruscan prince
Segimundus, son of Segestes.
[Sidenote: Retirement of Tiberius from the chief command.]
Political differences, however, in the imperial family broke down or
interrupted the full military success. The discord between Tiberius and
his stepfather led to the former resigning the command in the beginning
of 748 {6.}. The dynastic interest did not allow comprehensive
military operations to be entrusted to other generals than princes
of the imperial house; and after the death of Agrippa and Drusus,
and the retirement of Tiberius, there were no able generals in that
house. Certainly in the ten years, when governors with the ordinary
powers bore sway in Illyricum and in Germany, the military operations
there may not have undergone so complete an interruption as they
appear to us to have done, seeing that tradition, with its courtly
colouring, does not in its report deal out equal measure to campaigns
conducted by, and to those conducted without, princes; but the arrest
laid on them was unmistakable, and this itself was a retrogression.
Ahenobarbus, who, in consequence of his alliance by marriage with the
imperial house--his wife was the daughter of a sister of Augustus--had
greater freedom of action than other officers, and who in his Illyrian
governorship had crossed the Elbe without encountering resistance,
afterwards as governor of Germany reaped no laurels there. Not merely
the exasperation, but the courage also, of the Germans was again
rising, and in the year 2 the country appears again in revolt, the
Cherusci and the Chauci under arms. Meanwhile at the imperial court
death had interposed, and the removal of the young sons of Augustus had
reconciled the latter and Tiberius.
[Sidenote: Tiberius once more commander in chief.]
Scarcely was this reconciliation sealed by his adoption as a son and
proclaimed (4), when Tiberius resumed the work where it had been broken
off, and once more in this and in the two following summers (5-6) led
the armies over the Rhine. It was a repetition of, and an advance upon,
the earlier campaigns. The Cherusci were brought back to allegiance
in the first campaign, the Chauci in the second; the Cannenefates,
adjoining the Batavi, and not inferior in bravery, the Bructeri,
settled in the region of the sources of the Lippe and on the Ems, and
various other cantons, submitted, as did also the powerful Langobardi,
here first mentioned, dwelling at that time between the Weser and Elbe.
The first campaign led over the Weser into the interior; in the second
at the Elbe itself the Roman legions confronted the Germanic general
levy on the other bank. From the year 4 to 5 the Roman army took up,
apparently for the first time, its winter quarters on German soil at
Aliso. All this was attained without any considerable conflicts; the
circumspect conduct of the war did not break resistance, but made it
impossible. This general aimed, not at unfruitful laurels, but at
lasting success. The naval expedition, too, was repeated; like the
first campaign of Drusus, the last of Tiberius was distinguished by the
navigating of the North Sea. But the Roman fleet this time advanced
farther; the whole coast of the North Sea, as far as the promontory of
the Cimbri, that is, the extremity of Jutland, was explored by it, and
it then, sailing up the Elbe, joined the land-army stationed on the
latter. The emperor had expressly forbidden the crossing of the river;
but the tribes beyond the Elbe--the Cimbri just named, in what is now
Jutland, the Charudes to the south of them, the powerful Semnones
between the Elbe and the Oder--were brought at least into relation to
the new neighbours.
[Sidenote: Campaign against Maroboduus.]
It might have been thought that the goal was reached. But one thing
was still wanting to the establishment of the iron ring which was to
surround the Great Germany; it was the establishment of a connection
between the middle Danube and the upper Elbe--the occupation of the old
home of the Boii, which with its mountain-cincture planted itself like
a gigantic fortress between Noricum and Germany. The king Maroboduus,
of noble Marcomanian lineage, but in his youth by prolonged residence
in Rome introduced to its firmer military and political organisation,
had after his return home--perhaps during the first campaign of Drusus
and the transmigration, thereby brought about, of the Marcomani from
the Main to the upper Elbe--not merely raised himself to be prince of
his people, but had also moulded his rule not after the loose fashion
of the Germanic kings, but, one might say, after the model of the
Augustan. Besides his own people, he ruled over the powerful tribe of
the Lugii (in what is now Silesia), and the body of his clients must
have extended over the whole region of the Elbe, as the Langobardi
and the Semnones are described as subject to him. Hitherto he had
observed entire neutrality in presence of the other Germans as of
the Romans. He gave perhaps to the fugitive enemies of the Romans an
asylum in his country, but he did not actively mingle in the strife,
not even when the Hermunduri had settlements assigned to them by the
Roman governor on Marcomanian territory (p. 31), and when the left
bank of the Elbe became subject to the Romans. He did not submit to
them, but he bore all these occurrences without interrupting, on that
account, his friendly relations with the Romans. By this certainly not
magnanimous and scarce even so much as prudent policy, he had gained
this much, that he was the last to be attacked; after the completely
successful Germanic campaigns in the years 4 and 5 his turn came. From
two sides--from Germany and Noricum--the Roman armies advanced against
the Bohemian mountain-circle; Gaius Sentius Saturninus, advanced up the
Main, clearing the dense forests from Spessart to the Fichtelgebirge
with axe and fire; while Tiberius in person, starting from Carnuntum,
where the Illyrian legions had encamped during the winter of the years
5-6, advanced against the Marcomani. The two armies, amounting together
to twelve legions, were even in number so superior as almost to double
that of their opponents, whose fighting force was estimated at 70,000
infantry and 4000 horsemen. The cautious strategy of the general seemed
on this occasion also to have quite ensured success, when a sudden
incident interrupted the farther advance of the Romans.
[Sidenote: Dalmato-Pannonian insurrection.]
The Dalmatian tribes and the Pannonians, at least of the region of the
Save, for a short time obeyed the Roman governors; but they bore the
new rule with an ever increasing grudge, above all on account of the
taxes, to which they were unaccustomed, and which were relentlessly
exacted. When Tiberius subsequently asked one of the leaders as to the
grounds of the revolt, he answered that it had taken place because the
Romans set not dogs and shepherds, but wolves, to guard their flocks.
Now the legions from Dalmatia were brought to the Danube, and the
men capable of arms were called out, in order to be sent thither to
reinforce the armies. These troops made a beginning, and took up arms
not for, but against, Rome. Their leader was one of the Daesitiatae
(around Serajevo), Bato. The example was followed by the Pannonians,
under the leadership of two Breuci, another Bato and Pinnes. All
Illyricum rose with unheard of rapidity and unanimity. The number
of the insurgent forces was estimated at 200,000 infantry and 9000
horsemen. The levy for the auxiliary troops, which had taken place more
especially among the Pannonians to a considerable extent, had diffused
more widely a knowledge of Roman warfare, along with the Roman language
and even Roman culture. Those who had served as Roman soldiers formed
now the nucleus of the insurrection.[14] The Roman citizens settled or
sojourning in large number in the insurgent regions, the merchants,
and above all, the soldiers, were everywhere seized and slain. The
independent tribes, as well as those of the provinces, entered into the
movement. The princes of the Thracians, entirely devoted to the Romans,
certainly brought their considerable and brave bands to the aid of the
Roman generals; but from the other bank of the Danube the Dacians, and
with them the Sarmatae, broke into Moesia. The whole wide region of the
Danube seemed to have conspired to put an abrupt end to the foreign
rule.
The insurgents were not disposed to await attack, but planned an
invasion of Macedonia, and even of Italy. The danger was serious; the
insurgents might, by crossing the Julian Alps, stand in a few days once
more before Aquileia and Tergeste--they had not yet forgotten the way
thither--and in ten days before Rome, as the emperor himself expressed
it in the senate, to make sure at all events of its assent to the
comprehensive and urgent military preparations. In the utmost haste
new forces were raised, and the towns more immediately threatened
were provided with garrisons; in like manner whatever troops could be
dispensed with were despatched to the threatened points. The first to
arrive at the spot was the governor of Moesia, Aulus Caecina Severus,
and with him the Thracian king Rhoemetalces; soon other troops followed
from the transmarine provinces. But above all Tiberius was obliged,
instead of penetrating into Bohemia, to return to Illyricum. Had the
insurgents waited till the Romans were engaged in the struggle with
Maroboduus, or had the latter made common cause with them, the position
might have been a very critical one for the Romans. But the former
broke loose too early, and the latter, faithful to his system of
neutrality, condescended just at this time to conclude peace with the
Romans on the basis of the _status quo_. Thus Tiberius had, no doubt,
to send back the Rhine-legions, because Germany could not possibly
be denuded of troops, but he could unite his Illyrian army with the
troops arriving from Moesia, Italy, and Syria, and employ it against
the insurgents. In fact the alarm was greater than the danger. The
Dalmatians, indeed, broke repeatedly into Macedonia and pillaged the
coast as far as Apollonia; but there was no invasion of Italy, and the
fire was soon confined to its original hearth.
Nevertheless, the work of the war was not easy; here, as everywhere,
the renewed overthrow of the subjects was more laborious than the
subjugation itself. Never in the Augustan period was such a body of
troops ever united under the same command; already in the first year of
the war the army of Tiberius consisted of ten legions along with the
corresponding auxiliary forces, and in addition numerous veterans who
had again joined of their own accord and other volunteers, together
about 120,000 men; later he had fifteen legions united under his
banners.[15] In the first campaign (6 A.D.) the contest was waged with
very varying fortune; the large places, like Siscia and Sirmium, were
successfully protected against the insurgents, but the Dalmatian Bato
fought as obstinately and in part successfully against the governor of
Pannonia, Marcus Valerius Messalla, the orator's son, as his Pannonian
namesake against Aulus Caecina governor of Moesia. The petty warfare
above all gave much trouble to the Roman troops. Nor did the following
year (7), in which along with Tiberius his nephew the young Germanicus
appeared on the scene of war, put an end to the ceaseless conflicts.
It was not till the third campaign (8) that the Romans succeeded in
subduing in the first instance the Pannonians, chiefly, as it would
seem, through the circumstance that their leader, gained over by the
Romans, induced his troops all and sundry to lay down their arms at
the river Bathinus, and surrendered his colleague in the supreme
command, Pinnes, to the Romans, for which he was recognised by them as
prince of the Breuci. Punishment indeed soon befell the traitor; his
Dalmatian namesake caught him and had him executed, and once more the
revolt blazed up among the Breuci; but it was speedily extinguished
again, and the Dalmatian was confined to the defence of his own home.
There Germanicus and other leaders of division had in this, as in
the following year (9), to sustain vehement conflicts in the several
cantons; in the latter year the Pirustae (on the borders of Epirus)
and the canton to which the leader himself belonged, the Daesitiatae,
were subdued, one bravely defended stronghold being reduced after
another. Once more in the course of the summer Tiberius himself took
the field, and set in motion all his fighting force against the remains
of the insurrection. Even Bato, shut up by the Roman army in the strong
Andetrium (Much, above Salonae), his last place of refuge, gave up
the cause as lost. He left the town, when he could not induce the
desperadoes to submit, and yielded himself to the victor, with whom he
found honourable treatment; he was relegated as a political prisoner
to Ravenna, where he died. Without their leader the troops still for
a time continued the vain struggle, till the Romans captured the fort
by assault--it is probably this day, the 3d August, that is recorded
in the Roman calendar as the anniversary of the victory achieved by
Tiberius in Illyricum.
[Sidenote: Dacian war of Lentulus.]
Retribution fell also on the Dacians beyond the Danube. Probably at
this time, after the Illyrian war was decided in favour of Rome, Gnaeus
Lentulus led a strong Roman army across the Danube, reached as far
as the Marisus (Marosch) and emphatically defeated them in their own
country, which was then for the first time trodden by a Roman army.
Fifty thousand captive Dacians were made to settle in Thrace.
Men of later times termed the "Batonian war" of the years 6-9 the most
severe which Rome had to sustain against an external foe since that of
Hannibal. It inflicted severe wounds on the Illyrian land; in Italy the
joy over the victory was boundless when the young Germanicus brought
the news of the decisive success to the capital. The exultation did not
last long; almost simultaneously with the news of this success there
came to Rome accounts of a defeat, such as reached the ears of Augustus
but once in his reign of fifty years--a defeat which was still more
significant in its consequences than in itself.
[Sidenote: Germanic rising.]
The state of things in the province of Germany has been already
set forth. The recoil which follows on any foreign rule with the
inevitableness of a natural event, and which had just set in in the
Illyrian land, was in preparation also among the cantons of the middle
Rhine. The remnants of the tribes settled immediately on the Rhine were
indeed quite discouraged; but those dwelling farther back, especially
the Cherusci, Chatti, Bructeri, Marsi, were less injuriously affected
and by no means powerless. As always in such cases, there was formed
in every canton a party of the compliant friends of the Romans, and
a national party preparing in secret a renewed rising. The soul of
the latter was a young man of twenty-six years, of the Cheruscan
princely house, Arminius son of Sigimer; he and his brother Flavus
had received from the emperor Augustus the gifts of Roman citizenship
and of equestrian rank,[16] and both had fought with distinction as
officers in the last Roman campaigns under Tiberius; the brother was
still serving in the Roman army and had established a home for himself
in Italy. Naturally Arminius also was regarded by the Romans as a man
specially to be trusted; the accusations, which his better informed
countryman Segestes brought forward against him, availed not to shake
this confidence in view of the well-known hostility subsisting between
the two. Of the further preparations we have no knowledge; that the
nobility and especially the noble youth took the side of the patriots,
was a matter of course, and found clear expression in the fact that
Segestes's own daughter, Thusnelda, in spite of the prohibition of her
father, married Arminius, while her brother Segimundus and Segestes's
brother Segimer, as well as his nephew Sesithacus, played a prominent
part in the insurrection. It had not a wide range, far less than that
of the Illyrian rising; it can scarcely in strictness be called a
Germanic revolt; the Batavi, the Frisii, the Chauci on the coast took
no part in it, as little such of the Suebian tribes as were under
Roman rule, still less king Maroboduus; in reality only those Germans
rose who had some years previously leagued themselves against Rome,
and against whom the offensive of Drusus was primarily directed. The
Illyrian rising doubtless promoted the ferment in Germany, but there
is no trace of any thread of connection between the two similar and
almost contemporary insurrections; had such a connection subsisted the
Germans would hardly have waited to strike till the Pannonian rising
had been overpowered and the very last strongholds in Dalmatia were
surrendering. Arminius was the brave and shrewd, and above all things
fortunate, leader in the conflict of despair over the lost national
independence--nothing less, but also nothing more.
[Sidenote: Varus.]
It was more the fault of the Romans than the merit of the insurgents,
if the plan of the latter succeeded. So far, certainly, the Illyrian
war had an effect on Germany. The able generals, and to all appearance
also the experienced troops, had been moved from the Rhine to the
Danube. The Germanic army was apparently not diminished, but the
greatest part of it consisted of new legions formed during the war.
Still worse was its position as to leaders. The governor, Publius
Quinctilius Varus,[17] was, no doubt, the husband of a niece of
the emperor, and a man of ill-acquired, but princely, wealth and
of princely arrogance, but inert in body and obtuse in mind, and
without any military gifts or experience--one of those many Romans in
high station who, in consequence of an adherence to the old mixture
of administrative functions with those of higher command, wore the
general's scarf after the model of Cicero. He knew not how to spare
nor yet to see through the new subjects; oppression and exaction were
practised, as had been the wont of his earlier governorship over the
patient Syria; the headquarters swarmed with advocates and clients;
and in grateful humility the conspirators especially received judgment
and justice at his hands, while the net was being drawn more and more
closely around the arrogant praetor.
The position of the army was what was then the normal one. There
were at least five legions in the province, two of which had their
winter-quarters at Mogontiacum, three in Vetera or else in Aliso.
The latter had taken up their summer encampment in the year 9 on the
Weser. The natural route of communication from the upper Lippe to the
Weser leads over the low chain of heights of the Osning and of the
Lippe Forest, which separates the valley of the Ems from that of the
Weser, through the Dören defile into the valley of the Werra, which
falls into the Weser at Rehme, not far from Minden. Here therefore,
approximately, the legions of Varus at that time were encamped. As a
matter of course this summer camp was connected with Aliso, the base of
the Roman position on the right bank of the Rhine, by a road supplied
with depots. The good season of the year came to its close, and they
were making ready for the return march, when the news came that a
neighbouring canton was in revolt; and Varus resolved, instead of
leading back the army by that depot-route, to take a circuit and by the
way to bring back the rebels to allegiance.[18] So they set out; the
army consisted, after numerous reductions, of three legions and nine
divisions of troops of the second class, together about 20,000 men.[19]
When the army had removed to a sufficient distance from its line of
communication, and penetrated far enough into the pathless country,
the confederates in the neighbouring cantons rose, cut down the small
divisions of troops stationed among them, and broke forth on all sides
from the defiles and woods against the army of Varus on its march.
Arminius and the most notable leaders of the patriots had remained
to the last moment at the Roman headquarters to make Varus secure.
On the very evening before the day on which the insurrection burst
forth they had supped in the general's tent with Varus; and Segestes,
when announcing the impending outbreak of the revolt, had adjured the
general to order the immediate arrest of himself as well as of the
accused, and to await the justification of his charge by the facts.
The confidence of Varus was not to be shaken. Arminius rode away from
table to the insurgents, and was next day before the ramparts of the
Roman camp. The military situation was neither better nor worse than
that of the army of Drusus before the battle at Arbalo, and than had,
under similar circumstances, often been the plight of Roman armies.
The communications were for the moment lost; the army, encumbered
with heavy baggage in a pathless country and at a bad rainy season in
autumn, was separated by several days' march from Aliso; the assailants
were beyond doubt far superior in number to the Romans. In such cases
it is the solid quality of the troops that is decisive; and, if the
decision here for once was unfavourable to the Romans, the result was
doubtless mostly due to the inexperience of the young soldiers, and
especially to the want of head and of courage in the general. After
the attack took place the Roman army continued its march, now beyond
doubt in the direction of Aliso, amidst constantly increasing pressure
and increasing demoralisation. Even the higher officers failed in part
to do their duty; one of them rode away from the field of battle
with all the cavalry, and left the infantry to sustain the conflict
alone. The first to despair utterly was the general himself; wounded
in the struggle, he put himself to death before the matter was finally
decided, so early indeed, that his followers still made an attempt
to burn the dead body and to withdraw it from being dishonoured by
the enemy. A number of the superior officers followed his example.
Then, when all was lost, the leader that was left surrendered, and
thereby put out of his own power what remained open to these last--an
honourable soldier's death. Thus perished the Germanic army in one of
the valleys of the mountain-range that bounds the region of Münster,
in the autumn of the year 9 A.D.[20] The eagles fell--all three of
them--into the enemy's hand. Not a division cut its way through, not
even those horsemen who had left their comrades in the lurch; only a
few who were isolated and dispersed were able to effect their escape.
The captives, especially the officers and the advocates, were fastened
to the cross, or buried alive, or bled under the sacrificial knife of
the German priests. The heads cut off were nailed as a token of victory
to the trees of the sacred grove. Far and wide the land rose against
the foreign rule; it was hoped that Maroboduus would join the movement;
the Roman posts and roads on the whole right bank of the Rhine fell
without further trouble into the power of the victors. Only in Aliso,
the brave commandant Lucius Caedicius, not an officer, but a veteran
soldier, offered a resolute resistance, and his archers were enabled
to make the encampment before the walls so annoying to the Germans,
who possessed no weapons for distant fighting, that they converted
the siege into a blockade. When the last stores of the besieged were
exhausted, and still no relief came, Caedicius broke out one dark
night; and this remnant of the army, though burdened with numerous
women and children, and suffering severe losses through the assaults of
the Germans, in reality ultimately reached the camp at Vetera. Thither
also the two legions stationed in Mentz under Lucius Nonius Asprenas
had gone on the news of the disaster. The resolute defence of Aliso,
and the rapid intervention of Asprenas, hindered the Germans from
following up the victory on the left bank of the Rhine, and perhaps the
Gauls from rising against Rome.
[Sidenote: Tiberius again on the Rhine.]
The defeat was soon compensated, in so far as the Rhine army was
immediately not simply made up to its strength, but considerably
reinforced. Tiberius once more took up the supreme command, and though
for the year following on the battle of Varus (10) the history of the
war had no combats to record, it is probable that arrangements were
then made for the occupation of the Rhine-frontier by eight legions,
and simultaneously for the division of this command into that of the
upper army, with Mentz as its headquarters, and that of the lower
with the headquarters at Vetera, an arrangement, as a whole, which
thereupon remained normal for centuries. It could not but be expected
that this increase of the army of the Rhine would be followed by the
energetic resumption of operations on the right bank. The Romano-German
conflict was not a conflict between two powers equal in the political
balance, in which the defeat of the one might justify the conclusion
of an unfavourable peace; it was the conflict of a great civilised
and organised state against a brave but, in a political and military
aspect, barbarous nation, in which the ultimate result was settled
from the first, and an isolated failure in the plan as sketched might
as little produce any change as the ship gives up its voyage because
a gust of wind drives it out of its course. But it was otherwise.
Tiberius, doubtless, went across the Rhine in the following year (11),
but this expedition did not resemble the former one. He remained during
the summer on that side, and celebrated the emperor's birthday there,
but the army kept to the immediate neighbourhood of the Rhine, and
of expeditions on the Weser and on the Elbe there was nothing said.
Evidently the object was only to show to the Germans that the Romans
still knew how to find the way into their country, and perhaps also to
make such arrangements on the right bank of the Rhine as the change of
policy required.
[Sidenote: Germanicus on the Rhine.]
The great command embracing both armies was retained, and retained
accordingly in the imperial house. Germanicus had already exercised it
in the year 11 along with Tiberius; in the following year (12), when
the administration of the consulate detained him in Rome, Tiberius
commanded alone on the Rhine; with the beginning of the year 13
Germanicus took up the sole command. The state of things was regarded
as one of war with the Germans; but these were years of inaction.[21]
The fiery and ambitious hereditary prince bore with reluctance the
constraint imposed on him, and we can understand how, as an officer,
he should not forget the three eagles in the hands of the enemy, and
how, as the son of Drusus, he should wish to re-erect his structure
that had been destroyed. Soon the opportunity presented itself, and he
took it. On the 19th August of the year 14, the emperor Augustus died.
The first change in the throne of the new monarchy did not pass over
without a crisis, and Germanicus had opportunity of proving by deeds to
his father that he was disposed to maintain allegiance to him. But at
the same time he found in it warrant for resuming, even unbidden, the
long-wished-for invasion of Germany; he declared that he had by this
fresh campaign to repress the not inconsiderable ferment that had been
called forth among the legions upon the change of sovereign. Whether
this was a real reason or a pretext we know not, and perhaps he did not
himself know. The commandant of the Rhine army could not be debarred
from crossing the frontier anywhere, and it always to a certain degree
depended on himself how far he should proceed against the Germans.
Perhaps too, he believed that he was acting in the spirit of the new
ruler, who had at least as much claim as his brother to the name of
conqueror of Germany, and whose announced appearance in the camp on the
Rhine might, doubtless, be conceived of, as though he were coming to
resume the conquest of Germany broken off at the bidding of Augustus.
[Sidenote: Renewed offensive.]
However this may be, the offensive beyond the Rhine began anew. Even
in the autumn of the year 14, Germanicus in person led detachments
of all the legions at Vetera over the Rhine, and penetrated up the
Lippe pretty far into the interior, laying waste the country far
and wide, putting to death the natives, and destroying the temples,
such as that of Tanfana held in high honour. Those assailed--chiefly
Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipes,--sought to prepare the fate of Varus
for the crown-prince on his way home; but the attack recoiled before
the energetic bearing of the legions. As this advance met with no
censure, but on the contrary, thanks and marks of honour were decreed
to the general for it, he went farther. In the opening of the year
15 he assembled his main force, in the first instance on the middle
Rhine, and advanced in person from Mentz against the Chatti as far as
the upper confluents of the Weser, while the lower army, farther to
the north, attacked the Cherusci and the Marsi. There was a certain
justification for this proceeding in the fact that the Cherusci
favourably disposed towards Rome, who had, under the immediate
impression of the disaster of Varus, been obliged to join the patriots,
were now again at open variance with the much stronger national party,
and invoked the intervention of Germanicus. He was actually successful
in liberating Segestes, the friend of the Romans, when hard pressed
by his countrymen, and at the same time in getting possession of his
daughter, the wife of Arminius. Segestes' brother Segimerus, once the
leader of the patriots by the side of Arminius, submitted. The internal
dissensions of the Germans once more paved the way for the foreign
rule. In the very same year Germanicus undertook his main expedition
to the region of the Ems; Caecina marched from Vetera to the upper
Ems, while he in person went thither with the fleet from the mouth of
the Rhine; the cavalry moved along the coast through the territory
of the faithful Frisians. When reunited the Romans laid waste the
country of the Bructeri and the whole territory between the Ems and
Lippe, and thence made an expedition to the disastrous spot where, six
years before, the army of Varus had perished, to erect a monument to
their fallen comrades. On their farther advance the Roman cavalry were
allured by Arminius and the exasperated hosts of the patriots into an
ambush, and would have been destroyed had not the infantry come up and
prevented greater mischief. More serious dangers attended the return
homeward from the Ems, which followed at first the same routes as the
march thither.
[Sidenote: Retreat of Caecina.]
The cavalry arrived at the winter camp uninjured. Seeing that the fleet
was not sufficient for conveying the infantry of four legions, owing
to the difficulty of navigation--it was about the time of the autumnal
equinox--Germanicus disembarked two of them and made them return along
the shore; but inadequately acquainted with the ebbing and flowing of
the tide at this season of the year, they lost their baggage and ran
the risk of being drowned _en masse_. The retreat of the four legions
of Caecina from the Ems to the Rhine resembled exactly that of Varus;
indeed, the difficult, marshy country offered perhaps still greater
difficulties than the defiles of the wooded hills. The whole mass of
natives, with the two princes of the Cherusci, Arminius and his highly
esteemed uncle Inguiomerus, at their head, threw themselves on the
retreating troops in the sure hope of preparing for them the same fate,
and filled the morasses and woods all around. But the old general,
experienced in forty years' of war service, remained cool even in the
utmost peril, and kept his despairing and famishing men firmly in hand.
Yet even he might not perhaps have been able to avert the mischief but
for the circumstance that, after a successful attack during the march,
in which the Romans lost a great part of their cavalry and almost the
whole baggage, the Germans, sure of victory and eager for spoil, in
opposition to Arminius' advice, followed the other leader, and instead
of further surrounding the enemy, attempted directly to storm the
camp. Caecina allowed the Germans to come up to the ramparts, but then
burst forth from all posterns and gates with such vehemence upon the
assailants that they suffered a severe defeat, and in consequence of it
the further retreat took place without material hindrance. Those at
the Rhine had already given up the army as lost, and were on the point
of casting off the bridge at Vetera, to prevent the Germans at least
from penetrating into Gaul; it was only the resolute remonstrance of a
woman, the wife of Germanicus and daughter of Agrippa, which frustrated
the desperate and disgraceful resolve.
The resumption of the subjugation of Germany thus began not quite
successfully. The territory between the Rhine and Weser had indeed been
again trodden and traversed, but the Romans had no decisive results to
show, and the enormous loss in material, particularly in horses, was
sorely felt, so that, as in the times of Scipio, the towns of Italy and
of the western provinces took part in patriotic contributions to make
up for what was lost.
[Sidenote: Campaign of the year 16.]
For the next campaign (16) Germanicus changed his plan of warfare. He
attempted the subjugation of Germany on the basis of the North Sea
and the fleet, partly because the tribes on the coast, the Batavi,
Frisians, and Chauci, adhered more or less to the Romans, partly in
order to shorten the marches--in which much time was spent and much
loss incurred--from the Rhine to the Weser and Elbe and back again.
After he had employed this spring, like the previous one, for rapid
advances on the Main and on the Lippe, he, in the beginning of summer,
embarked his whole army at the mouth of the Rhine in the powerful
transport-fleet of 1000 sail which had meanwhile been made ready, and
actually arrived without loss at the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet
remained. Thence he advanced, as may be conjectured, up the Ems as far
as the mouth of the Haase, and then along the latter as far up as the
Werra-valley, and through this to the Weser. By this means the carrying
of the army, 80,000 strong, through the Teutoburg Forest, which was
attended with great difficulties, particularly as to provisions, was
avoided. A secure reserve for supplies was furnished in the camp
beside the fleet, and the Cherusci on the right bank of the Weser were
assailed in flank instead of in front. Here the Romans encountered the
levy _en masse_ of the Germans, again led by the two chiefs of the
patriot party, Arminius and Inguiomerus. What warlike resources were at
their disposal is shown by the fact that on two occasions, one shortly
after the other, in the Cheruscan country--first on the Weser itself
and then somewhat farther inland[22]--they fought in the open field
against the whole Roman army, and in both hardly contested the victory.
The latter certainly fell to the Romans, and of the German patriots a
considerable number were left on the fields of battle. No prisoners
were taken, and both sides fought with extreme exasperation. The second
tropaeum of Germanicus spoke of the overthrow of all the Germanic
tribes between the Rhine and Elbe; the son placed this campaign of
his alongside of the brilliant campaigns of his father, and reported
to Rome that in the next campaign he should have the subjugation of
Germany complete. But Arminius escaped, although wounded, and continued
still at the head of the patriots; and an unforeseen mischief marred
the success won by arms. On the return home, which the greater part of
the legions made by sea, the transport-fleet encountered the autumn
storms of the North Sea. The vessels were dashed on all sides upon the
islands of the North Sea, and as far as the British coasts. A great
portion were destroyed, and those that escaped had for the most part
to throw horses and baggage overboard, and to be glad of saving their
bare life. The loss of vessels was, as in the times of the Punic war,
equivalent to a defeat. Germanicus himself, cast adrift alone with the
admiral's ship on the desolate shore of the Chauci, was in despair at
this misfortune, and on the point of seeking his death in that ocean
the assistance of which he had at the beginning of this campaign
invoked so earnestly and so vainly. Doubtless afterwards the loss of
men proved not to be quite so great as it had at first appeared, and
some effective blows which the general, on his return to the Rhine,
inflicted on the nearest barbarians, raised the sunken courage of the
troops. But, taken as a whole, the campaign of the year 16, as compared
with that of the preceding year, ended in more brilliant victories
doubtless, but also in much more serious loss.
[Sidenote: The altered situation.]
The recall of Germanicus was at the same time the abolition of the
command-in-chief of the Rhenish army. The mere division of the command
put an end to the conduct of the war as heretofore pursued; the
circumstance that Germanicus was not merely recalled, but obtained no
successor, was tantamount to ordaining the defensive on the Rhine.
Thus the campaign of the year 16 was the last which the Romans waged
in order to subdue Germany and to transfer the boundary of the empire
from the Rhine to the Elbe. That this was the aim of the campaigns
of Germanicus is shown by their very course, and by the trophy that
celebrated the frontier of the Elbe. The re-establishment, too, of the
military works on the right bank of the Rhine, of the forts of the
Taunus, as well as of the stronghold of Aliso and the line connecting
it with Vetera, belonged only in part to such an occupation of the
right bank as was in keeping with the restricted plan of operations
after the battle of Varus; in fact it had a far wider scope. But the
designs of the general were not, or not quite, those of the emperor.
It is more than probable that Tiberius from the outset allowed rather
than sanctioned the enterprises of Germanicus on the Rhine, and it is
certain that he wished to put an end to them by recalling him in the
winter of 16-17. Beyond doubt, at the same time, a good part of what
had been attained was given up, and in particular the garrison was
withdrawn from Aliso. As Germanicus, even in the following year, found
not a stone left of the memorial of victory erected in the Teutoburg
Forest, so the results of his victories disappeared like a flash of
lightning into the water, and none of his successors continued the
building on this basis.
[Sidenote: Motives for the change of policy.]
If Augustus gave up the conquered Germany as lost after the battle of
Varus, and if Tiberius now, when the conquest had once more been taken
in hand, ordered it to be broken off, we are well entitled to ask, What
motives guided the two notable rulers in this course, and what was the
significance of these important events for the general policy of the
empire?
The battle of Varus is an enigma, not in a military but in a political
point of view--not in its course, but in its consequences. Augustus
was not wrong when he demanded back his lost legions, not from the
enemy nor from fate, but from the general; it was a disaster such as
unskilled leaders of division from time to time bring about for every
state. We have difficulty in conceiving that the destruction of an
army of 20,000 men without further direct military consequences should
have given a decisive turn to the policy at large of a judiciously
governed universal empire. And yet the two rulers bore that defeat
with a patience as unexampled as it was critical and hazardous for
the position of the government in relation to the army and to its
neighbours; they allowed the conclusion of peace with Maroboduus,
which, beyond doubt, was meant to be in strictness a mere armistice,
to become withal definitive, and made no further attempt to get the
upper valley of the Elbe into their hands. It must have been no easy
thing for Tiberius to see the collapse of the great structure begun in
concert with his brother, and after the latter's death almost completed
by himself; the energetic zeal with which, as soon as he had again
entered on the government, he took up the Germanic war which he had
begun ten years ago, enables us to measure what this self-denial must
have cost him. If, nevertheless, the self-denial was persevered in not
merely by Augustus, but also after his death by Tiberius himself, there
is no other reason to be found for it than that they recognised the
plans pursued by them for twenty years for the changing of the boundary
to the north as incapable of execution, and the subjugation and mastery
of the region between the Rhine and the Elbe appeared to them to
transcend the resources of the empire.
[Sidenote: The Elbe frontier.]
If the previous boundary of the empire ran from the middle Danube up to
its source and to the upper Rhine, and thence down that river, it was,
at all events, materially shortened and improved by being shifted to
the Elbe, which in its head-waters approaches the middle Danube, and
to its course throughout; in which case, probably, besides the evident
military gain, there came into view also the political consideration
that the keeping of the great commands as far as possible remote from
Rome and Italy was one of the leading maxims of the Augustan policy,
and an army of the Elbe would hardly have played such a part in the
further development of Rome as the armies of the Rhine but too soon
undertook. The preliminary conditions to this end, the overthrow of
the Germanic patriot-party and of the Suebian king in Bohemia, were no
easy tasks; nevertheless they had already once stood on the verge of
succeeding, and with a right conduct of the war these results could
not fail to be reached. But it was another question whether, after
the institution of the Elbe frontier, the troops could be withdrawn
from the intervening region; this question had been raised in a very
serious way for the Roman government by the Dalmato-Pannonian war. If
the mere impending movement of the Roman Danube-army into Bohemia had
called forth a popular rising in Illyricum, that was only put down
by the exertion of all their military resources after a four years'
conflict, this wide region might not be left to itself either at the
time or for many years to come. Similar, doubtless, was the state of
the case on the Rhine. The Roman public was wont, indeed, to boast
that the state held all Gaul in subjection by means of the garrison at
Lyons 1200 strong; but the government could not forget that the two
great armies on the Rhine not merely warded off the Germans, but also
had a very material bearing on the Gallic cantons that were not at all
distinguished by submissiveness. Stationed on the Weser or even on the
Elbe, they would not have rendered this service in equal measure; and
to keep both the Rhine and the Elbe occupied was beyond their power.
[Sidenote: And its abandonment.]
Thus Augustus might well come to the conclusion that with the strength
of the army as it then stood--considerably increased indeed of late,
but still far below the measure of what was really requisite--that
great regulation of the frontier was not practicable; the question was
thus converted from a military one into one of internal policy, and
especially into one of finance. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius ventured
to increase still further the expense of the army. We may blame them
for not doing so. The paralysing double blow of the Illyrian and the
Germanic insurrections with their grave disasters, the great age and
the enfeebled vigour of the ruler, the increasing disinclination of
Tiberius for initiating any fresh and great undertaking, and above all
any deviation from the policy of Augustus, doubtless co-operated to
induce this result, and did so, perhaps, to the injury of the state.
By the demeanour of Germanicus, not to be approved but easily to be
explained, we perceive how keenly the soldiers and the youth felt
the abandonment of the new province of Germany. In the poor attempt
to retain, at least nominally, the lost Germany with the help of the
two German cantons on the left of the Rhine, and in the ambiguous and
uncertain words with which Augustus himself in his account of the case
lays or forgoes claim to Germany as Roman, we discern how perplexed was
the attitude of the government towards public opinion in this matter.
The grasping at the frontier of the Elbe was a mighty, perhaps a too
bold stroke, undertaken possibly by Augustus--who did not generally
soar so high--only after years of hesitation, and doubtless not without
the determining influence of the younger stepson who was in closest
intercourse with him. But to retrace too bold a step is, as a rule, not
a mending of the mistake, but a second mistake. The monarchy had need
of warlike honour unstained and of unconditional warlike success, in
quite another way than the former burgomaster-government; the absence
of the numbers 17, 18, and 19--never filled up since the battle of
Varus--in the roll of regiments, was little in keeping with military
prestige, and the peace with Maroboduus, on the basis of the _status
quo_, could not be construed by the most loyal rhetoric into a success.
The assumption that Germanicus began those far-reaching enterprises
in opposition to the strict orders of his government is forbidden by
his whole political position; but the reproach that he made use of his
double position, as supreme commander of the first army of the Rhine
and as future successor to the throne, in order to carry out at his own
hand his politico-military plans, is one from which he can as little
be exempted as the emperor from the no less grave reproach of having
started back perhaps from the forming, or perhaps only from the clear
expression and the sharp execution, of his own resolves. If Tiberius
at least allowed the resumption of the offensive, he must have felt
how much was to be said for a more vigorous policy; he may perhaps,
as over-considerate people do, have left the decision, so to speak,
to destiny, till at length the repeated and severe misfortunes of the
crown-prince once more justified the policy of despair. It was not easy
for the government to bid an army halt which had brought back two of
the three lost eagles; but it was done. Whatever may have been the real
and the personal motives, we stand here at a turning-point in national
destinies. History, too, has its flow and its ebb; here, after the tide
of Roman sway over the world has attained its height, the ebb sets in.
Northward of Italy the Roman rule had for a few years reached as far as
the Elbe; since the battle of Varus its bounds were the Rhine and the
Danube. A legend--but an old one--relates that the first conqueror of
Germany, Drusus, on his last campaign at the Elbe, saw a vision of a
gigantic female figure of Germanic mould, that called to him in his own
language the word "Back!" The word was not spoken, but it was fulfilled.
[Sidenote: Germans against Germans.]
Nevertheless the defeat of the Augustan policy, as the peace with
Maroboduus and the sufferance of the Teutoburg disaster may well be
termed, was hardly a victory of the Germans. After the battle with
Varus the hope must doubtless have passed through the minds of the
best, that a certain union of the nation would accrue from the glorious
victory of the Cherusci and their allies, and from the retiring of the
enemy in the west as in the south. Perhaps in these very crises the
feeling of unity may have dawned on the Saxons and Suebians formerly
confronting each other as strangers. The fact that the Saxons sent
from the battle-field the head of Varus to the king of the Suebians,
can be nothing but the savage expression of the thought that the hour
had come for all Germans to throw themselves in joint onset upon
the Roman empire, and thus to secure the frontier and the freedom
of their land, as they could alone be secured, by striking down the
hereditary foe in his own home. But the cultured man and the politic
king accepted the gift of the insurgents only in order to forward the
head to the emperor Augustus for burial; he did nothing for, but also
nothing against, the Romans, and persevered unshaken in his neutrality.
Immediately after the death of Augustus there were fears at Rome of
the Marcomani invading Raetia, but apparently without cause; and when
Germanicus thereupon resumed the offensive against the Germans from
the Rhine, the mighty king of the Marcomani looked on inactive. This
policy of finesse or of cowardice dug its own grave amidst a Germanic
world fiercely excited, and drunk with patriotic successes and hopes.
The more remote Suebian tribes but loosely connected with the empire,
the Semnones, Langobardi, and Gothones, declared off from the king,
and made common cause with the Saxon patriots; it is not improbable
that the considerable forces, which were evidently at the disposal of
Arminius and Inguiomerus in the conflicts with Germanicus, flowed to
them in great part from these quarters.
[Sidenote: Fall of Maroboduus.]
Soon afterwards, when the Roman attack was suddenly broken off, the
patriots turned (17) to assail Maroboduus, perhaps to assail the kingly
office in general, at least as the latter administered it on the Roman
model.[23] But even among themselves divisions had set in; the two
nearly related Cheruscan princes, who in the last struggles had led
the patriots, if not victoriously, at any rate bravely and honourably,
and had hitherto constantly fought shoulder to shoulder, no longer
stood together in this war. The uncle Inguiomerus no longer tolerated
his being second to his nephew, and at the outbreak of the war passed
to the side of Maroboduus. Thus matters came to a decisive battle
between Germans and Germans, nay, between the same tribes; for Suebi
as well as Cherusci fought in both armies. Long the conflict wavered;
both armies had learned from the Roman tactics, and on both sides the
passion and the exasperation were alike. Arminius did not achieve a
victory properly so called, but his antagonist left to him the field of
battle; and, as Maroboduus seemed to have fared the worst, those who
had hitherto adhered to him left him, and he found himself confined to
his own kingdom. When he asked for Roman aid against his overpowerful
countrymen, Tiberius reminded him of his attitude after the battle of
Varus, and replied that now the Romans in turn would remain neutral.
His fate was rapidly decided. In the very following year (18) he was
surprised in his royal abode itself by a prince of the Gothones,
Catualda, to whom he had formerly given personal offence, and who had
thereupon revolted from him with the other non-Bohemian Suebi; and,
abandoned by his own people, he with difficulty made his escape to the
Romans, who granted to him the asylum which he sought--he died many
years afterwards, as a Roman pensioner, at Ravenna.
[Sidenote: End of Arminius.]
Thus the opponents as well as the rivals of Arminius had become
refugees, and the Germanic nation looked to none else than to him. But
this greatness was his danger and his destruction. His own countrymen,
especially his own clan, accused him of going the way of Maroboduus
and of desiring to be not merely the first, but also the lord and
the king of the Germans--whether with reason or not, and whether, if
he wished this, he did not perhaps wish what was right, who can say?
The result was a civil war between him and these representatives of
popular freedom; two years after the banishment of Maroboduus he too,
like Caesar, fell by the dagger of nobles of republican sentiments
near to his person. His wife Thusnelda and his son born in captivity,
Thumelicus, on whom he had never set eyes, marched at the triumph of
Germanicus (26th May, 17) among the other Germans of rank, in chains
to the Capitol; the old Segestes was for his fidelity to the Romans
provided with a place of honour, whence he might look on at the
public entry of his daughter and his grandson. They all died within
the Roman empire; with Maroboduus the wife and son of his antagonist
met in the exile of Ravenna. When Tiberius remarked at the recall of
Germanicus that there was no need to wage war against the Germans, and
that they would of themselves take care to do what was requisite for
Rome, he knew his adversaries; in this, at all events, history has
pronounced him right. But to the high-spirited man who, at the age of
six-and-twenty, had released his Saxon home from the Italian foreign
rule, who thereafter had been general as well as soldier in a seven
years' struggle for that freedom regained, who had staked not merely
person and life, but also wife and child for his nation, to fall at the
age of thirty-seven by an assassin's hand--to this man his people gave,
what it was in their power to give, an eternal monument in heroic song.
Footnotes.
[1: Dio, li. 23, expressly says this as to the year 725: τέως μὲν
οὖν ταῦτ᾿ ἐποίουν (_i.e._ so long as the Bastarnae attacked only
the Triballi--near Oescus in Lower Moesia, and the Dardani in Upper
Moesia), οὐδὲν σφίσι πρᾶγμα πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἦν· ἐπεὶ δὲ τόν τε
Αἷμον ὑπερέβησαν καὶ τὴν Θρᾴκην τὴν Δενθελητῶν ἔνσπονδον αὐτοῖς οὖσαν
κατέδραμον κ. τ. λ. The allies in Moesia, of whom Dio, xxxviii. 10
speaks, are the coast towns.]
[2: When Dio says (li. 23): τὴν Σεγετικὴν καλουμένην προσεποίησατο
καὶ ἐς τὴν Μυσίδα ἐνέβαλε, the town spoken of, doubtless, can only be
Serdica, the modern Sofia, on the upper Oescus, the key to the Moesian
country.]
[3: After the campaign of Crassus the conquered land was probably
organised in such a way that the coast went to the Thracian kingdom, as
Zippel has shown (_Röm. Illyricum_, p. 243), and the western portion
was, just like Thrace, assigned in fief to the native princes, in
place of one of whom must have come the _praefectus civitatium Moesiae
et Triballiae_ (_C. I. L._ v. 1838), who was still acting under
Tiberius. The usual assumption that Moesia was at first combined with
Illyricum, rests only on the circumstance that in the enumeration of
the provinces apportioned in the year 727 between emperor and senate
in Dio, liii. 12 it is not named, and so was contained in "Dalmatia."
But this enumeration does not extend at all to the vassal-states and
the procuratorial provinces, and so far all is in due keeping with
our assumption. On the other hand, weighty arguments tell against the
usual hypothesis. Had Moesia been originally a part of the province
of Illyricum, it would have retained this name; for on the division
of a province the name was usually retained, and only a defining
epithet added. But the appellation Illyricum, which Dio doubtless
reproduces _l.c._, was always in this connection restricted to the
upper (Dalmatia) and the lower (Pannonia). Moreover, if Moesia was a
part of Illyricum, there was no room left for that Prefect of Moesia
and Triballia, or in other words for his kingly predecessor. Lastly,
it is far from probable that in 727 {27.} a command of such extent and
importance should have been entrusted to a single senatorial governor.
On the other hand, everything admits of easy explanation, if small
client-states arose in Moesia after the war of Crassus; these were as
such from the outset under the emperor, and, as the senate did not take
part in their successive annexation and conversion into a governorship,
this might easily be unnoticed in the Annals. It was completed in or
before the year 743 {11.}, seeing that the governor, L. Calpurnius
Piso then waging war against the Thracians, to whom Dio (liv. 34)
erroneously assigns the province of Pamphylia, can only have had as his
province Pannonia or Moesia, and, as at that time Tiberius was acting
as legate in Pannonia, there is left for him only Moesia. In 6 A.D.
there certainly appears an imperial governor of Moesia.]
[4: The official title of Cottius was not king, like that of his
father Donnus, but "president of the cantonal union" (_praefectus
civitatium_), as he is named on the still standing arch of Susa
erected by him in honour of Augustus in the year 745-6 {9-8.}. But the
position was beyond doubt held for life, and, under reservation of the
superior's right to confirm it, also hereditary; so far therefore the
union was certainly a principality, as it is usually so termed.]
[5: We know this road only in the shape which the emperor Claudius, the
son of the constructor, gave to it; originally, of course, it cannot
have been called _via Claudia_, but only _via Augusta_, and we can
hardly regard as its terminus in Italy Altinum, in the neighbourhood
of the modern Venice, since, under Augustus, all the imperial roads
still led to Rome. That the road ran through the upper Adige valley is
shown by the milestone found at Meran (_C. I. L._ v. 8003); that it led
to the Danube, is attested; the connection of the making of this road
with the founding of Augusta Vindelicum, though this was at first only
a market-village (_forum_), is more than probable (_C. I. L._ iii. p.
711); in what way Augsburg and the Danube were reached from Meran we
do not know. Subsequently the road was rectified, so as to leave the
Adige at Bautzen, and to lead up the Eisach valley over the Brenner to
Augsburg.]
[6: The locality "in which the Bessi honour the god Dionysos," and
which Crassus took from them and gave to the Odrysians (Dio, li.
25), is certainly the same _Liberi patris lucus_, in which Alexander
sacrificed, and the father of Augustus, _cum per secreta Thraciae
exercitum duceret_, asked the oracle respecting his son (Suetonius,
_Aug._ 94), and which Herodotus already mentions (ii. III; compare
Euripides, _Hec._ 1267) as an oracular shrine placed under the
protection of the Bessi. Certainly it is to be sought northwards of
Rhodope; it has not yet been discovered.]
[7: That the battle at Arbalo (Plin. _H.N._ xi. 17, 55) belongs to this
year, is shown by Obsequens, 72, and so the narrative in Dio, liv. 33,
applies to it.]
[8: That the fall of Drusus took place in the region of the Saale
we may be allowed to infer from Strabo, vii. 1, 3, p. 291, although
he only says that he perished on the march between Salas and Rhine,
and the identification of the Salas with the Saale rests solely on
the resemblance of name. From the scene of the mishap he was then
transported as far as the summer camp (Seneca, _Cons. ad Marciam_
3: _ipsis illum hostibus aegrum cum veneratione et pace mutua
prosequentibus nec optare quod expediebat audentibus_), and in that
camp he died (Sueton., _Claud._ 1). This camp lay in the heart of
the barbarian land (Valerius Max. v. 5, 3) and not very far from the
battlefield of Varus (Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 7, where the _vetus ara
Druso sita_ is certainly to be referred to the place where he died);
we may be allowed to seek it in the region of the Weser. The dead body
was then conveyed to the winter-camp (Dio, lv. 2) and there burnt;
this spot was regarded, according to Roman usage, also as the place
of burial, although the depositing of the ashes took place in Rome,
and to this is to be referred the _honorarius tumulus_ with the annual
obsequies (Sueton. _l.c._). Probably we have to seek for this place
at Vetera. When a later author (Eutropius, vii. 13) speaks of the
_monumentum_ of Drusus at Mentz, this is doubtless not the tomb, but
the elsewhere mentioned Tropaeum (Florus, ii. 30: _Marcomanorum spoliis
et insignibus quendam editum tumulum in tropaei modum excoluit_).]
[9: What we learn from Dio, lv. 10, partly confirmed by Tacitus, _Ann._
iv. 44, cannot be apprehended otherwise. Noricum and Raetia must have
been put under this governor as an exceptional measure, or the course
of operations induced him to pass beyond the limit of his governorship.
The assumption that he marched through Bohemia itself, which would
involve still greater difficulties, is not required by the narrative.]
[10: To a connection in rear of the camp on the Rhine with the port
Boulogne we might perhaps take the much disputed notice of Florus, ii.
30, to refer: _Bonnam_ (or _Bormam_) _et Gessoriacum pontibus iunxit
classibusque firmavit_, with which is to be compared the mention by the
same author of forts on the Maas. Bonn may reasonably have been at that
time the station of the Rhine-fleet; Boulogne was in later times still
a fleet-station. Drusus might well have occasion to make the shortest
and safest land-route between the two stations for the fleet available
for transport, though the writer, probably bent on striking effect,
awakens by his pointed mode of expression conceptions which cannot be
in that form correct.]
[11: As to the administrative partition of Gaul there is, apart from
the separation of the Narbonensis, an utter absence of accounts,
because it rested only on imperial ordinances, and nothing in reference
to it came into the records of the senate. But the first information of
the existence of separate Upper and Lower German commands is furnished
by the campaigns of Germanicus, and the battle of Varus can hardly
be understood under that assumption; here, doubtless, the _hiberna
inferiora_ appear, viz. that of Vetera (Velleius, ii. 120), and the
counterpart to it, the _superiora_, can only have been formed by that
of Mentz; but this was not under a colleague of Varus, but under his
nephew, who was thus subordinate to him in command. Probably the
partition only took place, in consequence of the defeat, in the last
years of Augustus.]
[12: The _praesidium_ constructed by Drusus _in monte Tauno_ (Tacitus,
_Ann._ i. 56), and the φρούριον ἐν Χάττοις παρ' αὐτῷ τῷ Ῥήνῳ associated
with Aliso (Dio, liv. 33), are probably identical, and the special
position of the canton of the Mattiaci is evidently connected with the
construction of Mogontiacum.]
[13: That the "fort at the confluence of the Lupias and the Helison,"
in Dio, liv. 33, is identical with the oftener mentioned Aliso, and
this must be sought on the upper Lippe, is subject to no doubt; and
that the Roman winter-camp at the sources of the Lippe (_ad caput
Lupiae_, Velleius, ii. 205), the only one of the kind, so far as we
know, on German ground, is to be sought just there, is at least very
probable. That the two Roman roads running along the Lippe, and their
fortified places of bivouac, led at least as far as the region of
Lippstadt, the researches of Hölzermann in particular have shown.
The upper Lippe has only one confluent of note, the Alme, and as the
village of Elsen lies not far from where the Alme falls into the
Lippe, some weight may be here assigned to the similarity of name. To
the view, supported among others by Schmidt, which places Aliso at
the confluence of the Glenne (and Liese) with the Lippe, the chief
objection is that the camp _ad caput Lupiae_ must then have been
different from Aliso, and in general this point lies too far from the
line of the Weser, while from Elsen the route leads directly through
the Dören defile into the Werra valley. Schmidt, who does not adhere to
the identification of Aliso and Elsen, remarks generally (_Westfälische
Zeitschrift für Gesch. und Alterthumskunde_, xx. p. 259), that the
heights of Weser (not far from Elsen), and generally the left margin of
the valley of the Alme, are the centre of a semicircle formed by the
mountains in front, and this highlying, dry region, allowing an exact
look-out as far as the mountains, which covers the whole country of the
Lippe and is itself covered in front by the Alme, is well adapted for
the starting-point of a march towards the Weser.]
[14: This and not more is what Velleius says (ii. 110): _in omnibus
Pannoniis non disciplinae_ (= military training) _tantummodo, sed
linguae quoque notitia Romanae, plerisque etiam litterarum usus et
familiaris animorum erat exercitatio_. These are the same phenomena as
are met with in the case of the Cheruscan princes, only in increased
measure; and they are quite intelligible when we bear in mind the
Pannonian and Breucian _alae_ and _cohortes_ raised by Augustus.]
[15: If we assume that of the twelve legions who were on the march
against Maroboduus (Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 46), as many as we find
soon after in Germany, that is, five, went to form the army there,
the Illyrian army of Tiberius numbered seven, and the number of ten
(Velleius, ii. 113) may fairly be referred to the contingents from
Moesia and Italy, that of fifteen to the contingents from Egypt or
Syria, and to the further levies in Italy, whence the newly raised
legions went no doubt to Germany, but those thereby relieved went to
the army of Tiberius. Velleius (ii. 112) speaks inaccurately, at the
very beginning of the war, of five legions brought up by A. Caecina
and Plautius Silvanus _ex transmarinis provinciis_; firstly, the
transmarine troops could not be at once on the spot, and secondly, the
legions of Caecina were of course the Moesian. Comp. my commentary on
the _Mon. Ancyr._ 2d ed. p. 71.]
[16: Velleius (ii. 118) says so; _adsiduus militiae nostrae prioris
comes, iure etiam civitatis Romanae eius equestres consequens gradus_;
which coincides with the _ductor popularium_ of Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 10.
Such officers must have been of no infrequent occurrence at this time;
thus, there fought in the third campaign of Drusus _inter primores
Chumstinctus et Avectius tribuni ex civitate Nerviorum_ (Liv. _Ep._
141), and under Germanicus Chariovalda _dux Batavorum_ (Tac. _Ann._ ii.
11).]
[17: The effigy of Varus is shown on a copper coin of the African town
Achulla, struck under his proconsulate of Africa in the year 747-8,
B.C. 7-6 (L. Müller, _Num. de l'ancienne Afrique_, ii. p. 44, comp. p.
52). The base which once supported the statue erected to him by the
town of Pergamus has again been brought to light by the excavations
there; the subscription runs: ὁ δῆμος [ἐτίμησεν] Πόπλιον Κοινκτίλιον
Σέξτου υἱὸν Οὐάρ[ον] πάσης ἀρετῆ[ς ἕνεκα].]
[18: The report of Dio, the only one which hands down to us a
somewhat connected view of this catastrophe, explains the course
of it sufficiently, if we only take further into account--what Dio
certainly does not bring into prominence--the general relation of the
summer and winter camps, and thereby answer the question justly put by
Ranke (_Weltgeschichte_, iii. 2, 275), how the whole army could have
marched against a local insurrection. The narrative of Florus by no
means rests on sources originally different, as that scholar assumes,
but simply on the dramatic accumulation of motives for action, such
as is characteristic of all historians of this type. The peaceful
dispensing of justice by Varus and the storming of the camp are both
known to the better tradition, and that in their causal connection.
The ridiculous representation of the Germans breaking in at all the
gates into the camp, while Varus is sitting on the judgment-seat and
the herald is summoning the parties before him, is not tradition, but
a picture manufactured from it. That this is in utter antagonism to
the description by Tacitus of the three bivouacs, as well as to sound
reason, is obvious.]
[19: The normal strength of the three _alae_ and the six _cohortes_ is
not to be calculated exactly, inasmuch as among them there may have
been double divisions (_miliariae_); but the army cannot have numbered
much over 20,000 men. On the other hand, there appears no reason for
assuming a material difference of the effective strength from the
normal. The numerous detachments which are mentioned (Dio, lvi. 19)
serve to account for the comparatively small number of the _auxilia_,
which were always by preference employed for this duty.]
[20: As Germanicus, coming from the Ems, lays waste the territory
between the Ems and Lippe, that is, the region of Münster, and not
far from it lies the _Teutoburgiensis saltus_, where Varus's army
perished (Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 61), it is most natural to understand this
description, which does not suit the flat Münster region, of the range
bounding the Münster region on the north-east, the Osning; but it may
also be deemed applicable to the Wiehen mountains somewhat farther to
the north, parallel with the Osning, and stretching from Minden to the
source of the Hunte. We do not know at what point on the Weser the
summer camp stood; but in accordance with the position of Aliso near
Paderborn, and with the connections subsisting between this and the
Weser, it was probably somewhere near Minden. The direction of the
march on the return may have been any other excepting only the nearest
way to Aliso; and the catastrophe consequently occurred not on the
military line of communication between Minden and Paderborn itself,
but at a greater or less distance from it. Varus may have marched from
Minden somewhat in the direction of Osnabrück, then after the attack
have attempted from thence to reach Paderborn, and have met with his
end on this march in one of those two ranges of hills. For centuries
there have been found in the district of Venne at the source of the
Hunte a surprisingly large number of Roman gold, silver, and copper
coins, such as circulated in the time of Augustus, while later coins
hardly occur there at all (comp. the proofs in Paul Höfer, _der Feldzug
des Germanicus im Jahre 16_, Gotha, 1884, p. 82, f.) The coins thus
found cannot belong to one store of coins on account of their scattered
occurrence and of the difference of metals, nor to a centre of traffic
on account of their proximity as regards time; they look quite like
the leavings of a great extirpated army, and the accounts before us as
to the battle of Varus may be reconciled with this locality. As to the
year of the catastrophe there should never have been any dispute; the
shifting of it to the year 10 is a mere mistake. The season of the year
is in some measure determined by the fact that between the arrangement
to celebrate the Illyrian victory and the arrival of the unfortunate
news in Rome there lay only five days, and that arrangement probably
had in view the victory of 3d Aug., though it did not immediately
follow on the latter. Accordingly the defeat must have taken place
somewhere in September or October, which also accords with the
circumstance that the last march of Varus was evidently the march back
from the summer to the winter camp.]
[21: Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 9, and Dio, lvi. 26, attest the continuance
of the state of war; but nothing at all is reported from the nominal
campaigns of the summers of 12, 13, and 14, and the expedition of the
autumn of 14 appears as the first undertaken by Germanicus. It is true
that Germanicus had been proclaimed as Imperator probably even in the
lifetime of Augustus (_Mon. Ancyr._ p. 17); but there is nothing to
hinder our referring this to the campaign of the year 11, in which
Germanicus commanded with proconsular power alongside of Tiberius (Dio,
lvi. 25). In the year 12 he was in Rome for the administration of the
consulate, which he retained throughout the year, and which was still
at that time treated in earnest; this explains why Tiberius, as has now
been proved (Hermann Schulz, _Quaest. Ovidianae_, Greifswald, 1883, p.
15), still went to Germany in the year 12, and resigned his Rhenish
command only at the beginning of the year 13, on the celebration of the
Pannonian victory.]
[22: The hypothesis of Schmidt (_Westfäl. Zeitschrift_, xx. p.
301)--that the first battle was fought on the Idistavisian field
somewhere near Bückeburg, and the second, on account of the morasses
mentioned on the occasion, perhaps on the Steinhudersee, near the
village of Bergkirchen, which lies to the south of this--will not be
far removed from the truth, and may at least help us to realise the
matter. In this, as in most of the accounts of battles by Tacitus, we
must despair of reaching an assured result.]
[23: The statement of Tacitus (_Ann._ ii. 45), that this was properly
a war of the republicans against the monarchists, is probably not free
from a wish to transfer Hellenico-Roman views to the very different
Germanic world. So far as the war had an ethico-political tendency, it
would be called forth not by the _nomen regis_, as Tacitus says, but by
the _certum imperium visque regia_ of Velleius (ii. 108).]
CHAPTER II.
SPAIN.
[Sidenote: Conclusion of the conquest.]
The accidents of external policy caused the Romans to establish
themselves on the Pyrenaean peninsula earlier than in any other part of
the transmarine mainland, and to institute there two standing commands.
There, too, the republic had not, as in Gaul and Illyricum, confined
itself to subduing the coasts of the Italian sea, but had rather from
the outset, after the precedent of the Barcides, contemplated the
conquest of the whole peninsula. With the Lusitanians (in Portugal
and Estremadura) the Romans had fought from the time that they called
themselves masters of Spain; the "more remote province" had been
instituted, strictly speaking, against these tribes and simultaneously
with the "nearer" one; the Callaeci (Gallicia) became subject to the
Romans a century before the battle of Actium; shortly before that
battle the subsequent dictator Caesar had, in his first campaign,
carried the Roman arms as far as Brigantium (Corunna), and consolidated
afresh the annexation of this region to the more remote province. Then,
in the years between the death of Caesar and the sole rule of Augustus,
there was unceasing warfare in the north of Spain; no fewer than six
governors in this short time won triumphs there, and perhaps the
subjugation of the northern slope of the Pyrenees was effected chiefly
in this epoch.[24] The wars with the cognate Aquitanians on the north
side of the mountains, which fall within the same epoch, and the last
of which was victoriously ended in the year 727 { 27.}, must stand in
connection with these events. On the reorganising of the administrative
arrangements in 727 {27.} the peninsula went to Augustus, because
there was a prospect of extensive military operations there, and it
needed a permanent garrison. Although the southern third of the more
remote province, thenceforth named from the river Baetis (Guadalquivir)
was soon given back to the government of the senate,[25] by far the
greater portion of the peninsula remained constantly under imperial
administration, including the greater part of the more remote province,
Lusitania and Callaecia,[26] and the whole of the large nearer one.
Immediately after the institution of the new supreme control Augustus
resorted in person to Spain, with a view, in his two years' stay (728,
729) {26, 25.}, to organise the new administration, and to direct the
occupation of the portions of the country not yet subject. This he did
from Tarraco as his headquarters, and it was at that time that the seat
of government of the nearer province was transferred from New Carthage
to Tarraco, after which town this province is thenceforth usually
named. While it appeared necessary on the one hand not to remove the
seat of administration from the coast, the new capital on the other
hand commanded the region of the Ebro and the communications with the
north-west and the Pyrenees. Against the Astures (in the provinces of
Asturias and Leon), and above all, the Cantabri (in the Basque country
and the province of Santander), who obstinately held out in these
mountains and overran the neighbouring cantons, a warfare attended by
difficulties and heavy losses was prolonged--with interruptions, which
the Romans called victories--for eight years, till at length Agrippa
succeeded in breaking down the open resistance by destroying the
mountain towns and transplanting their inhabitants to the valleys.
[Sidenote: Military organisation in the North-west.]
If, as the emperor Augustus says, from his time the coast of the
ocean from Cadiz to the mouth of the Elbe obeyed the Romans, the
obedience in this corner of it was far from voluntary and little to
be trusted. Matters were still apparently far from having reached a
proper pacification in north-western Spain. There is still mention
in Nero's time of war-expeditions against the Asturians. A still
clearer tale is told by the occupation of the country, as Augustus
arranged it. Callaecia was separated from Lusitania and united with
the Tarraconensian province, to concentrate in one hand the chief
command in northern Spain. Not merely was this province then the
only one which, without bordering on an enemy's country, obtained a
legionary military command, but no fewer than three legions[27] were
directed thither by Augustus--two to Asturia, one to Cantabria; and,
in spite of the military pressure in Germany and in Illyricum, this
occupying force was not diminished. The headquarters were established
between the old metropolis of Asturia, Lancia, and the new Asturica
Augusta (Astorga) in Leon that still at present bears its name. With
this strong occupation of the north-west is probably connected the
construction of roads undertaken there to a considerable extent in
the earlier imperial period, although we are not able to demonstrate
the connection in detail, seeing that the allocation of these troops
in the Augustan age is unknown to us. Thus there was established by
Augustus and Tiberius for the capital of Collaecia, Bracara (Braga),
a connection with Asturica, that is, with the great headquarters, and
not less with the neighbouring towns to the north, north-east, and
south. Tiberius made similar constructions in the territory of the
Vascones and in Cantabria.[28] Gradually the occupying force could be
diminished, and under Claudius one legion, under Nero a second, could
be employed elsewhere. But these were regarded only as drafted off, and
still at the beginning of the reign of Vespasian the Spanish garrison
had resumed its earlier strength; it was reduced, in the strict sense,
only by the Flavian emperors, by Vespasian to two, by Domitian to one
legion. From thence down to the time of Diocletian a single legion,
the Seventh Gemina, and a certain number of auxiliary contingents
garrisoned Leon.
No province under the monarchy was less affected by outward or by
inward wars than this land of the far west. While at this epoch the
commanderships of the troops assumed, as it were, the positions of
competing parties, the Spanish army played throughout a secondary part
in that respect; it was only as helper of his colleague that Galba
entered into the civil war, and mere accident carried him to the first
place. The force holding the north-west of the Peninsula, which even
after its reduction still strikes us as comparatively strong, leads
us to infer that this region had not been completely obedient even in
the second and third centuries; but we are unable to state anything
definite as to the employment of the Spanish legion within the province
which it held in occupation. The struggle against the Cantabrians had
been waged with the help of vessels of war; subsequently the Romans had
no occasion to institute a permanent naval station there. It is not
till the period after Diocletian that we find the Pyrenaean peninsula,
like the Italian and the Graeco-Macedonian, without a standing garrison.
[Sidenote: Incursions of the Moors.]
That the province of Baetica was, at least after the beginning of the
second century, visited on various occasions from the opposite coast
by the Moors--the pirates of Rîf--we shall have to set forth in detail
when we survey the affairs of Africa. We may presume that this serves
to explain why, although in the senatorial provinces elsewhere imperial
troops were not wont to be stationed, by way of exception Italica (near
Seville) was provided with a division of the legion of Leon.[29] But
it chiefly devolved on the command stationed in the province of Tingi
(Tangier) to protect the rich south of Spain from these incursions.
Still it happened that towns like Italica and Singili (not far from
Antequera) were besieged by the pirates.
[Sidenote: Introduction of Italian municipal law.]
If preparation was anywhere made by the republic for the great
all-significant work of the imperial period--the Romanising of the
West--it was in Spain. Peaceful intercourse carried forward what
the sword had begun; Roman silver money was paramount in Spain long
before it circulated elsewhere outside of Italy; and the mines, the
culture of the vine and olive, and the relations of traffic produced
a constant influx of Italian elements to the coast, particularly in
the south-west. New Carthage, the creation of the Barcides, and from
its origin down to the Augustan age the capital of the Hither province
and the first trading port of Spain, embraced already in the seventh
century a numerous Roman population; Carteia, opposite to the present
Gibraltar, founded a generation before the age of the Gracchi, was the
first transmarine civic community with a population of Roman origin
(iii. 4) {iii. 4.}; the old and renowned sister-town of Carthage,
Gades, the modern Cadiz, was the first foreign town out of Italy,
that adopted Roman law and Roman language (iv. 573) {iv. 543.}. While
thus along the greatest part of the coast of the Mediterranean the
old indigenous as well as the Phoenician civilisation had already,
under the republic, conformed to the ways and habits of the ruling
people, in no province under the imperial period was Romanising so
energetically promoted on the part of the ruling power as in Spain.
First of all the southern half of Baetica, between the Baetis and the
Mediterranean, obtained, partly already under the republic or through
Caesar, partly in the years 739 and 740 {15 and 14.} through Augustus,
a stately series of communities with full Roman citizenship, which here
occupy not the coast especially, but above all the interior, headed
by Hispalis (Seville) and Corduba (Cordova) with colonial rights,
Italica (near Seville) and Gades (Cadiz) with municipal rights. In
southern Lusitania, too, we meet with a series of equally privileged
towns, particularly Olisipo (Lisbon), Pax Julia (Beja), and the colony
of veterans founded by Augustus during his abode in Spain and made
the capital of this province, Emerita (Merida). In the Tarraconensis
the burgess-towns are found predominantly on the coast--Carthago
Nova, Ilici (Elche), Valentia, Dertosa (Tortosa), Tarraco, Barcino
(Barcelona); in the interior only the colony in the Ebro valley,
Caesaraugusta (Saragossa), is conspicuous. In all Spain under Augustus
there were numbered fifty communities with full citizenship; nearly
fifty others had up to this time received Latin rights, and stood as
to inward organisation on a par with the burgess-communities. Among
the rest the emperor Vespasian likewise introduced the Latin municipal
organisation on occasion of the general imperial census instituted by
him in the year 74. The bestowal of burgess-rights was neither then,
nor generally in the better imperial period, extended much further than
it had been carried in the time of Augustus;[30] as to which probably
the chief regulative consideration was the restricted right of levy in
regard to those who were citizens of the empire.
[Sidenote: Romanising of the Iberians.]
The indigenous population of Spain, which thus became partly mixed up
with Italian settlers, partly led towards Italian habits and language,
nowhere emerges so as to be clearly recognised in the history of the
imperial period. Probably that stock, whose remains and whose language
maintain their ground up to the present day in the mountains of Biscay,
Guipuscoa, and Navarre, once filled the whole peninsula, as the Berbers
filled the region of north Africa. Their language, different from the
Indo-Germanic, and destitute of flexion like that of the Finns and
Mongols, proves their original independence; and their most important
memorials, the coins, in the first century of the Roman rule in Spain
embrace the peninsula, with the exception of the south coast from Cadiz
to Granada, where the Phoenician language then prevailed, and of the
region northward of the mouth of the Tagus and westward of the sources
of the Ebro, which was then probably to a large extent practically
independent, and certainly was utterly uncivilised. In this Iberian
territory the south-Spanish writing is clearly distinguished from
that of the north province; but not less clearly both are branches of
one stock. The Phoenician immigration here confined itself to still
narrower bounds than in Africa, and the Celtic mixture did not modify
the general uniformity of the national development in a way that we
can recognise. But the conflicts of the Romans with the Iberians belong
mainly to the republican epoch, and have been formerly described (ii.
221 f.) {ii. 209 f.}. After the already mentioned last passages of arms
under the first dynasty, the Iberians vanish wholly out of sight. To
the question, how far they became Romanised in the imperial period,
the information that has come to us gives no satisfactory answer. That
in the intercourse with their former masters they would have always
occasion to make use of the Roman language, needs no proof; but under
the influence of Rome the national language and the national writing
disappear even from public use within their own communities. Already in
the last century of the republic the native coinage, which at first was
to a large extent allowed, had become in the main set aside; from the
imperial period there is no Spanish civic coin with other than a Latin
legend.[31]
[Sidenote: Language.]
Like the Roman dress, the Roman language was largely diffused even
among those Spaniards who had not Italian burgess-rights, and the
government favoured the _de facto_ Romanising of the land.[32] When
Augustus died the Roman language and habits prevailed in Andalusia,
Granada, Murcia, Valencia, Catalonia, Aragon; and a good part of this
is to be accounted for not by colonising but by Romanising. By the
ordinance of Vespasian previously mentioned the native language was
restricted _de jure_ to private intercourse. That it held its ground
in this, is proved by its existence at the present day; what is now
confined to the mountains, which neither the Goths nor the Arabs ever
occupied, must in the Roman period certainly have extended over a great
part of Spain, especially the north-west. Nevertheless Romanising
certainly set in very much earlier and more strongly in Spain than in
Africa; monuments with native writing from the imperial period can be
pointed to in Africa in fair number, hardly at all in Spain; and the
Berber language at present still prevails over half of north Africa,
the Iberian only in the narrow valleys of the Basques. It could not
be otherwise, partly because in Spain Roman civilisation emerged much
earlier and much more vigorously than in Africa, partly because the
natives had not in the former as in the latter the free tribes to fall
back upon.
[Sidenote: The Spanish community.]
The native communal constitution of the Iberians was not perceptibly
to our view different from the Gallic. From the first Spain, like
the Celtic country on either side of the Alps, was broken up into
cantonal districts; the Vaccaei and the Cantabri were hardly in any
essential respect distinguished from the Cenomani of the Transpadana
and the Remi of Belgica. The fact that on the Spanish coins struck in
the earlier epoch of the Roman rule it is predominantly not the towns
that are named, but the cantons,--not Tarraco but the Cassetani, not
Saguntum but the Arsenses--shows, still more clearly than the history
of the wars of the time, that in Spain too there once subsisted larger
cantonal unions. But the conquering Romans did not treat these unions
everywhere in like fashion. The Transalpine cantons remained even
under Roman rule political commonwealths; the Spanish were, like the
Cisalpine, simply geographical conceptions. As the district of the
Cenomani is nothing but a collective expression for the territories of
Brixia, Bergomum, and so forth, so the Asturians consist of twenty-two
politically independent communities, which to all appearance do
not legally concern each other more than the towns of Brixia and
Bergomum.[33] Of these communities the Tarraconensian province numbered
in the Augustan age 293, in the middle of the second century 275. Here,
therefore, the old canton-unions were broken up. This course was hardly
determined by the consideration that the compactness of the Vettones
and the Cantabri seemed more hazardous for the unity of the empire
than that of the Sequani and the Treveri; the distinction doubtless
was chiefly based on the diversity of the time and of the form of
conquest. The region on the Guadalquivir became Roman a century and a
half earlier than the banks of the Loire and the Seine; the time when
the foundation of the Spanish organisation was laid was not so very far
from the epoch at which the Samnite confederacy was dissolved. There
the spirit of the old republic prevailed; in Gaul the freer and gentler
view of Caesar. The smaller and powerless districts, which after the
dissolution of the unions became the pillars of political unity--the
small cantons or clans--became changed in course of time, here as
everywhere into towns. The beginnings of urban development, even
outside of the communities that attained Italian rights, go far back
into the republican, perhaps into the pre-Roman, time; subsequently
the general bestowal of Latin rights by Vespasian must have made this
conversion general or very nearly so.[34] In reality there were among
the 293 Augustan communities of the province of Tarraco 114, and among
the 275 of the second century only twenty-seven, that were not urban
communities.
[Sidenote: Levy.]
Of the position of Spain in the imperial administration little is to be
said. In the levy the Spanish provinces played a prominent part. The
legions doing garrison-duty there were probably from the beginning of
the principate raised chiefly in the country itself; when afterwards on
the one hand the occupying force was diminished, and on the other hand
the levy was more and more restricted to the garrison-district proper,
Baetica, sharing in this respect the lot of Italy, enjoyed the dubious
blessing of being totally excluded from military service. The auxiliary
levy, to which especially the districts that lagged behind as regards
urban development were subjected, was carried out on a great scale in
Lusitania, Callaecia, Asturia, and not less in the whole of northern
and inland Spain; Augustus, whose father had formed even his body-guard
of Spaniards, recruited in none of the territories subject to him
(setting aside Belgica) so largely as in Spain.
For the finances of the state this rich country was beyond doubt one of
the most secure and most productive sources; but we have no detailed
information transmitted to us.
[Sidenote: Trade and commerce.]
The importance of the traffic of these provinces admits of being
inferred in some measure from the careful provision of the government
for the Spanish roads. Between the Pyrenees and Tarraco there have been
found Roman milestones even from the last times of the republic, such
as no other province of the West exhibits. We have already remarked
that Augustus and Tiberius promoted road-making in Spain mainly for
military reasons; but the road formed by Augustus at Carthago Nova can
only have been constructed on account of traffic, and it was traffic
mainly that was served by the imperial highway named after him, and
partly regulated, partly constructed anew by him. This road, continuing
the Italo-Gallic coast-road and crossing the Pyrenees at the Pass of
Puycerda, went thence to Tarraco, then pretty closely followed the
coast by way of Valentia as far as the mouth of the Jucar, but thence
made right across the interior for the valley of the Baetis,[35] then
ran from the arch of Augustus--which marked the boundary of the two
provinces, and with which a new numbering of the miles began--through
the province Baetica to the mouth of the river, and thus connected
Rome with the ocean. This was certainly the only imperial highway in
Spain. Afterwards the government did not do much for the roads of
Spain; the communes, to which these were soon in the main entrusted,
appear, so far as we see, to have provided everywhere--apart from the
tableland of the interior--communications to such an extent as was
required by the state of culture in the province. For, mountainous as
Spain is and not without steppes and waste land, it is yet one of the
most productive countries of the earth, both through the abundance
of the fruits of the soil and through its riches of wine and oil and
metals. To this were early added manufactures, especially in iron wares
and in woollen and linen fabrics. In the valuations under Augustus
no Roman burgess-community, Patavium excepted, had such a number of
rich people to show as the Spanish Gades with its great merchants
spread throughout the world; and in keeping with this was the refined
luxury of manners, the castanet-players who were here at home, and the
Gaditanian songs, which circulated, like those of Alexandria, among
the elegant Romans. The nearness of Italy, and the easy and cheap
intercourse by sea, gave at this epoch, especially to the Spanish south
and east coasts, the opportunity of bringing their rich produce to the
first market of the world, and probably with no country in the world
did Rome pursue so extensive and constant a traffic on a great scale as
with Spain.
That Roman civilisation pervaded Spain earlier and more powerfully
than any other province, is confirmed by evidence on various sides,
especially in respect to religion and to literature.
[Sidenote: Religious rites.]
It is true that in the territory that was still at a later period
Iberian, and remained tolerably free from immigration--in Lusitania,
Callaecia, Asturia--the native gods, with their singular names, ending
mostly in -icus and -ecus, such as Endovellicus, Eaecus, Vagodonnaegus,
and the like, maintained their ground still even under the principate
at the old seats. But not a single votive stone has been found in all
Baetica, which might not quite as well have been set up in Italy. And
the same holds true of Tarraconensis proper, only that isolated traces
are met with on the upper Douro of the worship of Celtic gods.[36] No
other province shows an equally energetic Romanising in matters of
ritual.
[Sidenote: The Spaniards in Latin literature.]
Cicero mentions the Latin poets at Corduba only to censure them; and
the Augustan age of literature was still in the main the work of
Italians, though individual provincials helped in it, and among others
the learned librarian of the emperor, the philologue Hyginus, was born
as a bondsman in Spain. But thenceforward the Spaniards undertook in
it almost the part, if not of leader, at any rate of schoolmaster. The
natives of Corduba, Marcus Porcius Latro, the teacher and the model
of Ovid, and his countryman and friend in youth, Annaeus Seneca,--both
only about a decade younger than Horace, but for a considerable time
employed in their native town as teachers of eloquence, before they
transferred their activity in that character to Rome--were the true
and proper representatives of the school-rhetoric that took the place
of the republican freedom and sauciness of speech. Once, when the
former could not avoid appearing in a real process, he came to a
stand-still in his address, and only recovered his fluency when, to
please the famous man, the court was transferred from the tribunal to
the school-hall. Seneca's son, the minister of Nero and the fashionable
philosopher of the epoch, and his grandson, the poet of the sentimental
opposition to the principate, Lucanus, have an importance, as doubtful
in literature as it is indisputable in history, which may in a certain
sense be put to the account of Spain. In the early times of the empire,
likewise, two other provincials from Baetica, Mela under Claudius,
Columella under Nero, gained a place among the recognised didactic
authors who cultivated style--the former by his short description of
the earth, the latter by a thorough, in part poetical, picture of
agriculture. If, in the time of Domitian, the poet Canius Rufus from
Gades, the philosopher Decianus from Emerita, and the orator Valerius
Licinianus from Bilbilis (Calatayud not far from Saragossa) are
celebrated as literary notabilities by the side of Virgil and Catullus
and by the side of the three stars of Corduba, this is certainly
the fortune also of one likewise a native of Bilbilis, Valerius
Martialis,[37] who himself yields to none among the poets of this epoch
in elegance and plastic power, or yet in venality and emptiness, and we
are justified in taking into account withal the fact of their being
fellow-countrymen; yet the mere possibility of weaving such a garland
of poets shows the importance of the Spanish element in the literature
of the time. But the pearl of Spanish-Latin authorship is Marcus
Fabius Quintilianus (35-95) from Calagurris on the Ebro. His father
had already acted as a teacher of eloquence in Rome; he himself was
brought to Rome by Galba, and occupied, especially under Domitian, a
distinguished position as tutor of the emperor's nephews. His textbook
of rhetoric and, in some degree, of the history of Roman literature,
is one of the most excellent which we possess from Roman antiquity,
pervaded by fine taste and sure judgment, simple in feeling as in
presentation, instructive without weariness, pleasing without effort,
contrasting sharply and designedly with the fashionable literature
that was so rich in phrases and so empty of ideas. It was in no small
degree due to him that the tendency became changed at any rate, if not
improved. Subsequently, amidst the general emptiness the influence of
the Spaniards comes no further into prominence. What is, historically,
of special moment in their Latin authorship is the complete clinging of
these provincials to the literary development of the mother-country.
Cicero, indeed, scoffs at the clumsiness and the provincialisms of the
Spanish votaries of poetry; and even Latro's Latin did not meet the
approval of the equally genteel and correct Roman by birth, Messalla
Corvinus. But after the Augustan age nothing similar is again heard
of. The Gallic rhetors, the great African ecclesiastical authors have,
as Latin writers, retained in some measure a foreign complexion; no
one would recognise the Senecas and Martial by their manner and style
as belonging to one or to another land; in hearty love to his own
literature and in subtle understanding of it never has any Italian
surpassed the teacher of languages from Calagurris.
Footnotes.
[24: There triumphed over Spain--apart from the doubtless political
triumph of Lepidus--in 718 {36.} Cn. Domitius Calvinus (consul in
714 {40.}), in 720 {34.} C. Norbanus Flaccus (consul in 716 {38.}),
between 720 {34.} and 725 {29.} L. Marcius Philippus (consul in 716
{38.}) and Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul in 716 {38.}), in 726
{28.} C. Calvisius Sabinus (consul in 715 {39.}), and in 728 {26.}
Sex. Appuleius (consul in 725 {29.}). The historians mention only the
victory achieved over the Cerretani (near Puycerda in the eastern
Pyrenees) by Calvinus (Dio, xlviii. 42; comp. Velleius, ii. 78, and the
coin of Sabinus with _Osca_, Eckhel, v. 203).]
[25: As Augusta Emerita in Lusitania only became a colony in 729 {25.}
(Dio, liii. 26), and this cannot well have been left out of account in
the list of the provinces in which Augustus founded colonies (_Mon.
Ancyr._ p. 119, comp. p. 222), the separation of Lusitania and Hispania
Ulterior must not have taken place till after the Cantabrian war.]
[26: Callaecia was not merely occupied from the Ulterior province,
but must still in the earlier time of Augustus have belonged to
Lusitania, just as Asturias also must have been at first attached
to this province. Otherwise the narrative in Dio, liv. 5, is not
intelligible; T. Carisius, the builder of Emerita, is evidently the
governor of Lusitania, C. Furnius the governor of the Tarraconensis.
With this agrees the parallel representation in Florus, ii. 33, for the
_Drigaecini_ of the MSS. are certainly the Βριγαικινοί, whom Ptolemy,
ii. 6, 29, adduces among the Asturians. Therefore Agrippa, in his
measurements, comprehends Lusitania with Asturia and Callaecia (Plin.
_H. N._ iv. 22, 118), and Strabo (iii. 4, 20, p. 166) designates the
Callaeci as formerly termed Lusitani. Variations in the demarcation of
the Spanish provinces are mentioned by Strabo, iii. 4, 19, p. 166.]
[27: These were the Fourth Macedonian, the Sixth Victrix, and the
Tenth Gemina. The first of these went, in consequence of the shifting
of quarters of the troops occasioned by the Britannic expedition of
Claudius, to the Rhine. The two others, although in the meanwhile
employed elsewhere on several occasions, were still, at the beginning
of the reign of Vespasian, stationed in their old garrison-quarters,
and with them, instead of the Fourth, the First Adiutrix newly
instituted by Galba (Tacitus, _Hist._ i. 44). All three were on
occasion of the Batavian war sent to the Rhine, and only one returned
from it. For in the year 88 there were still several legions stationed
in Spain (Plin. _Paneg._ 14; comp. _Hermes_, iii. 118), of which one
was certainly the Seventh Gemina already, before the year 79, doing
garrison-duty in Spain (_C. I. L._ ii. 2477); the second must have been
one of those three, and was probably the First Adiutrix, as this soon
after the year 88 takes part in the Danubian wars of Domitian, and is
under Trajan stationed in upper Germany, which suggests the conjecture
that it was one of the several legions brought in 88 from Spain to
upper Germany, and on this occasion came away from Spain. In Lusitania
no legions were stationed.]
[28: The camp of the Cantabrian legion may have been at the place
Pisoraca (Herrera on the Pisuerga, between Palencia and Santander),
which alone is named on inscriptions of Tiberius and of Nero, and that
as starting point of an imperial road (_C. I. L._ ii. 4883, 4884),
just as the Asturian camp was at Leon. Augustobriga also (to the west
of Saragossa) and Complutum (Alcalá de Henares to the north of Madrid)
must have been centres of imperial roads, not on account of their urban
importance, but as places of encampment for troops.]
[29: With this we may connect the fact that the same legion was, though
only temporarily and with a detachment, on active service in Numidia.]
[30: The expression used by Josephus (_contra Ap._ ii. 4), that "the
Iberians were named Romans," can only be referred to the bestowal of
Latin rights by Vespasian, and is an incorrect statement of one who was
a stranger.]
[31: Probably the most recent monument of the native language, that
admits of certainty as to its date, is a coin of Osicerda--which is
modelled after the denarii with the elephant that were struck by Caesar
during the Gallic war--with a Latin and Iberian legend (Zobel, _Estudio
historico de la moneda antigua española_, ii. 11). Among the wholly or
partially local inscriptions of Spain several more recent may be found;
public sanction is not even probable in the case of any of them.]
[32: There was a time when the communities of _peregrini_ had to
solicit from the senate the right to make Latin the language of
business; but for the imperial period this no longer held good. On
the contrary, at this time probably the converse was of frequent
occurrence. For example, the right of coining was allowed on the
footing that the legend had to be Latin. In like manner public
buildings erected by non-burgesses were described in Latin; thus an
inscription of Ilipa in Andalusia (_C. I. L._ ii. 1087) runs: _Urchail
Atitta f(ilius) Chilasurgun portas fornic(es) aedificand(a) curavit
de s(ua) p(ecunia)_. That the wearing of the toga was allowed even to
non-Romans, and was a sign of a loyal disposition, is shown as well by
Strabo's expression as to the Tarraconensis togata, as by Agricola's
behaviour in Britain (Tacitus, _Agric._ 21).]
[33: These remarkable arrangements are clear, especially from the
lists of Spanish places in Pliny, and have been well exhibited by
Detlefsen (_Philologus_, xxxii., 606 f.). The terminology no doubt
varies. As the designations _civitas_, _populus_, _gens_, belong to the
independent community, they pertain _de jure_ to these portions; thus,
_e.g._ there is mention of the _X civitates_ of the Autrigones, of the
_XXII populi_ of the Asturians, of the _gens Zoelarum_ (_C. I. L._ ii.
2633), which is just one of these twenty-two tribes. The remarkable
document which we possess concerning these Zoelae (_C. I. L._ ii. 2633)
informs us that this _gens_ was again divided into _gentilitates_,
which latter are also themselves called _gentes_, as this same document
and other testimonies (_Eph. Ep._ ii. p. 243) prove. _Civis_ is also
found in reference to one of the Cantabrian _populi_ (_Eph. Ep._ ii.
p. 243). But even for the larger canton, which indeed was once the
political unit, there are no other designations than these, strictly
speaking, retrospective and incorrect; _gens_ in particular is employed
for it even in the technical style (_e.g._, _C. I. L._ ii. 4233
_Intercat[iensis] ex gente Vaccaeorum_). That the commonwealth in Spain
was based on those small districts, not on the cantons, is clear as
well from the terminology itself as from the fact that Pliny in iii.
3, 18, places overagainst those 293 places the _civitates contributae
aliis_; moreover it is shown by the official _at census accipiendos
civitatium XXIII Vasconum et Vardulorum_ (_C. I. L._ vi. 1463) compared
with the _censor civitatis Remorum foederatae_ (_C. I. L._ xi. 1855,
comp. 2607).]
[34: As the Latin communal constitution is unsuited for a community
not organised as a town, those Spanish communities, which still
after Vespasian's time lacked urban organisation, must either have
been excluded from the bestowal of Latin rights or have had special
modifications to meet their case. The latter may be regarded as having
more probability. Inscriptions, even of the _gentes_, subsequent to
Vespasian's time, show a Latin form of name, as _C. I. L._ ii. 2633,
and _Eph. Ep._ ii. 322; and if isolated ones from this period should
be found with non-Roman names, it must always be a question whether
this is not simply due to actual negligence. Presumptive proofs of
non-Roman communal organisation, comparatively frequent in the scanty
inscriptions that certainly date before Vespasian (_C. I. L._ ii. 172,
1953, 2633, 5048), have not been met with by me in inscriptions that
are certainly subsequent to Vespasian.]
[35: The direction of the _via Augusta_ is specified by Strabo (iii.
4, 9, p. 160); to it belong all the milestones which have that name,
as well those from the region of Lerida (_C. I. L._ ii. 4920-4928) as
those found between Tarragona and Valencia (_ibid._ 4949-4954), and
lastly, the numerous ones _ab Iano Augusto, qui est ad Baetem_, or _ab
arcu, unde incipit Baetica, ad oceanum_.]
[36: At Clunia there was found a dedication to the Mothers (_C. I. L._
ii. 2776)--the only Spanish example of this worship so widely diffused
and so long continuing among the western Celts--at Uxama, one set up
to the _Lugoves_ (_ib._ 2818), a deity that recurs among the Celts of
Aventicum.]
[37: The choliambics (i. 61) run thus:--
_Verona docti syllabas amat vatis,
Marone felix Mantua est,
Censetur Apona Livio suo tellus
Stellaque nec Flacco minus,
Apollodoro plaudit imbrifer Nilus,
Nasone Peligni sonant,
Duosque Senecas unicumque Lucanum
Facunda loquitur Corduba,
Gaudent iocosae Canio suo Gades,
Emerita Deciano meo:
Te, Liciniane, gloriabitur nostra,
Nec me tacebit Bilbilis._]
CHAPTER III.
THE GALLIC PROVINCES.
Like Spain, southern Gaul had already in the time of the republic
become a part of the Roman empire, yet neither so early nor so
completely as the former country. The two Spanish provinces were
instituted in the age of Hannibal, the province Narbo in that of the
Gracchi; and, while in the former case Rome took to itself the whole
Peninsula, in the latter it was not merely content, down to the last
age of the republic, with the possession of the coast, but even of
this it directly took only the smaller and the more remote half. The
republic was not wrong in designating what it so possessed as the
town-domain of Narbo (Narbonne); the greater part of the coast, nearly
from Montpellier to Nice, belonged to the city of Massilia. This Greek
community was more a state than a city, and through its powerful
position the equal alliance subsisting from of old with Rome obtained a
real significance, such as had no parallel in any second allied city.
It is true, nevertheless, that the Romans were for these neighbouring
Greeks, still more than for the more remote Greeks of the East, shield
as well as sword. The Massaliots had probably the lower Rhone as far
up as Avignon in their possession; but the Ligurian and the Celtic
cantons of the interior were by no means subject to them, and the
Roman standing camp at Aquae Sextiae (Aix) a day's march to the north
of Massilia, was, quite in the true and proper sense, instituted for
the permanent protection of the wealthy Greek mercantile city. It was
one of the most momentous consequences of the Roman civil war, that
along with the legitimate republic its most faithful ally, the city
of Massilia, was politically annihilated, was converted from a state
sharing rule into a community which continued free of the empire and
Greek, but preserved its independence and its Hellenism in the modest
proportions of a provincial middle-sized town. In a political aspect
there is nothing more to be said of Massilia after its capture in the
civil war; the town was thenceforth for Gaul only what Neapolis was
for Italy--the centre of Greek culture and Greek learning. Inasmuch as
the greater part of the later province of Narbo only at that time came
under direct Roman administration, it is to this epoch in particular
that the erection of it in a certain measure belongs.
[Sidenote: Last conflicts in the three Gauls.]
How the rest of Gaul came into the power of Rome has been already
narrated (iv. 240 ff.) {iv. 230 f.} Before Caesar's Gallic war the
rule of the Romans extended approximately as far as Toulouse, Vienne,
and Geneva; after it, as far as the Rhine throughout its course, and
the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean on the north as on the west. This
subjugation, it is true, was probably not complete, in the north-west
perhaps not much less superficial than that of Britain (iv. 296) {iv.
283.}. Yet we are informed of supplemental wars, in the main, merely
as regards the districts of Iberian nationality. To the Iberians
belonged not merely the southern but also the northern slope of the
Pyrenees, with the country lying in front, Bearn, Gascony, and western
Languedoc[38]; and it has already been mentioned (p. 63) that when
north-western Spain was sustaining the last conflicts with the Romans,
there was also on the north side of the Pyrenees, and beyond doubt in
connection therewith, serious fighting, at first on the part of Agrippa
in the year 716 {38.}, then on the part of Marcus Valerius Messalla,
the well-known patron of the Roman poets, who in the year 726 or 727
{28 or 27.}, and thus nearly at the same time with the Cantabrian
war, vanquished the Aquitanians in a pitched battle in the old Roman
territory not far from Narbonne. In respect of the Celts nothing
further is mentioned than that, shortly before the battle of Actium,
the Morini in Picardy were overthrown; and, although during the twenty
years of almost uninterrupted civil war our reporters may have lost
sight of the comparatively insignificant affairs of Gaul, the silence
of the list of triumphs--here complete--shows at any rate that no
further military undertakings of importance took place in the land of
the Celts during this period.
[Sidenote: Insurrections.]
[Sidenote: Under Tiberius.]
Subsequently, during the long reign of Augustus, and amidst all the
crises--some of them very hazardous--of the Germanic wars, the Gallic
provinces remained obedient. No doubt the Roman government, as well
as the Germanic patriot party, as we have seen, constantly had it in
view that a decisive success of the Germans and their advance into
Gaul would be followed by a rising of the Gauls against Rome; the
foreign rule cannot therefore at that time have stood by any means
secure. Matters came to a real insurrection in the year 21 under
Tiberius. There was formed among the Celtic nobility a widely-ramified
conspiracy to overthrow the Roman government. It broke out prematurely
in the far from important cantons of the Turones and the Andecavi on
the lower Loire, and not merely the small garrison of Lyons, but also
a part of the army of the Rhine at once took the field against the
insurgents. Nevertheless the most noted districts joined; the Treveri,
under the guidance of Julius Florus, threw themselves in masses into
the Ardennes; in the immediate neighbourhood of Lyons the Haedui and
Sequani rose under the leadership of Julius Sacrovir. The compact
legions, it is true, gained the mastery over the rebels without much
trouble; but the rising, in which the Germans in no way took part,
shows at any rate the hatred towards the foreign rulers, which still at
that time prevailed in the land and particularly among the nobility--a
hatred which was certainly strengthened, but was not at first produced,
by the pressure of taxes and the financial distress that are designated
as causes of the insurrection.
[Sidenote: Gradual pacification of Gaul.]
It was a greater feat of Roman policy than that which enabled it to
become master of Gaul, that it knew how to retain the mastery, and that
Vercingetorix found no successor, although, as we see, there were not
entirely wanting men who would gladly have walked in the same path.
This result was attained by a shrewd combination of terrifying and of
winning--we may add, of sharing. The strength and the proximity of
the Rhine army was beyond question the first and the most effective
means of preserving the Gauls in the fear of their master. If this
army was maintained throughout the century at the same level, as will
be set forth in the following section, it was so probably quite as
much on account of their own subjects, as on account of neighbours
who afterwards were by no means specially formidable. That even the
temporary withdrawal of these troops imperilled the continuance of the
Roman rule, not because the Germans might then cross the Rhine, but
because the Gauls might renounce allegiance to the Romans, is shown
by the rising after Nero's death, in spite of all its weakness; after
the troops had marched off to Italy to make their general emperor, an
independent Gallic empire was proclaimed in Treves, and those soldiers
who were left were made bound to allegiance towards it. But although
this foreign rule, like every such rule, rested primarily and mainly
on superior power--on the ascendancy of compact and trained troops
over the multitude--it by no means rested on this exclusively. The art
of partition was here successfully applied. Gaul did not belong to
the Celts alone; not merely were the Iberians strongly represented in
the south, but Germanic tribes were settled in considerable numbers
on the Rhine, and were of importance still more by their conspicuous
aptitude for war, than by their number. Skilfully the government knew
how to foster and to turn to useful account the antagonism between
the Celts and the Germans on the left of the Rhine. But the policy of
amalgamation and of reconciliation operated still more powerfully.
[Sidenote: Policy of amalgamation.]
What measures were taken with this view we shall explain in the sequel.
Seeing that the cantonal constitution was spared, and even a sort
of national representation was conceded, and the measures directed
against the national priesthood were taken gradually, while the Latin
language was from the beginning obligatory, and with that national
representation there was associated the new worship of the emperor;
seeing that, on the whole, the Romanising was not undertaken in an
abrupt way, but was cautiously and patiently pursued, the Roman foreign
rule in the Celtic land ceased to be such, because the Celts themselves
became, and desired to be, Romans. The extent to which the work had
already advanced after the expiry of the first century of the Roman
rule in Gaul is shown by the just mentioned occurrences after Nero's
death, which, in their course as a whole, belong partly to the history
of the Roman commonwealth, partly to its relations with the Germans,
but must also be mentioned, at least by way of slight glance, in this
connection. The overthrow of the Julio-Claudian dynasty emanated from
a Celtic noble and began with a Celtic insurrection; but this was not
a revolt against the foreign rule like that of Vercingetorix or even
of Sacrovir; its aim was not the setting aside, but the transforming,
of the Roman government. The fact that its leader reckoned descent
from a bastard of Caesar one of the patents of nobility of his house,
clearly expresses the half-national, half-Roman character of this
movement. Some months later certainly, after the revolted Roman troops
of Germanic descent and the free Germans had for the moment overpowered
the Roman army, some Celtic tribes proclaimed the independence of their
nation; but this attempt proved a sad failure, not through the eventual
interference of the government, but from the very opposition of the
great majority of the Celtic cantons themselves, which could not, and
did not, desire to fall away from Rome.
[Sidenote: Roman rule no longer felt as foreign.]
The Roman names of the leading nobles, the Latin legend on the coins of
the insurrection, the travesty throughout of Roman arrangements, show
most clearly as that the deliverance of the Celtic nation from the yoke
of the foreigners in the year 70 was no longer possible, just because
there was such a nation no longer; and the Roman rule might be felt,
according to circumstances, as a yoke, but no longer as a foreign rule.
Had such an opportunity been offered to the Celts at the time of the
battle of Philippi, or even under Tiberius, the insurrection would have
run its course, not perhaps to another issue, but in streams of blood;
now it ran off into the sand. When, some decades after these severe
crises, the Rhine army was considerably reduced, these crises had given
the proof that the great majority of the Gauls were no longer thinking
of separation from the Italians, and the four generations that had
followed since the conquest had done their work. Subsequent occurrences
here were crises within the Roman world. When that world threatened to
fall asunder, the West as well as the East separated itself for some
time from the centre of the empire; but the separate state of Postumus
was the work of necessity, not of choice, and the separation was merely
_de facto_; the emperors who bore sway over Gaul, Britain, and Spain,
laid claim to the dominion of the whole empire quite as much as their
Italian rival emperors. Certainly traces enough remained of the old
Celtic habits and also of the old Celtic unruliness. As bishop Hilary
of Poitiers, himself a Gaul, complains of the overbearing character
of his countrymen, so the Gauls are, even in the biographies of the
later Caesars, designated as stubborn and ungovernable and inclined to
insubordination, so that in dealing with them tenacity and sternness
of government appear specially requisite. But a separation from the
Roman empire, or even a renouncing of the Roman nationality, so far as
there was any such at the time, was in these later centuries nowhere
less thought of than in Gaul; on the contrary, the development of
the Romano-Gallic culture, of which Caesar and Augustus had laid the
foundation, fills the later Roman period just as it fills the Middle
Ages and more recent times.
[Sidenote: Organisation of the three Gauls.]
The regulation of Gaul was the work of Augustus. In the adjustment of
imperial affairs after the close of the civil wars the whole of Gaul,
as it had been entrusted to Caesar or had been further acquired by
him, came--with the exception merely of the region on the Roman side
of the Alps, which had meanwhile been joined to Italy--under imperial
administration. Immediately afterwards Augustus resorted to Gaul, and
in the year 727 {27.} completed in the capital Lugudunum the census of
the Gallic province, whereby the portions of the country brought to the
empire by Caesar first obtained an organised land-register, and the
payment of tribute was regulated for them. He did not stay long at that
time, for Spanish affairs demanded his presence. But the carrying out
of the new arrangement encountered great difficulties and, in various
cases, resistance. It was not mere military affairs that gave occasion
to Agrippa's stay in Gaul in the year 735 {19.}, and that of the
emperor himself during the years 738-741 {16-13.}; and the governors
or commanders on the Rhine belonging to the imperial house, Tiberius,
stepson of Augustus, in 738 {16.}, his brother Drusus, 742-745 {12-9.},
Tiberius again, 745-747 {9-7.}, 757-759 {A.D. 3-5.}, 763-765 {A.D.
9-11.}, his son Germanicus, 766-769 {A.D. 12-15.}, had all of them the
task of carrying on the organisation of Gaul. The work of peace was
certainly no less difficult and no less important than the passages of
arms on the Rhine; we perceive this in the fact that the emperor took
in hand personally the laying of the foundation, and entrusted the
carrying it out to the men in the empire who were most closely related
to him and highest in station. It was only in those years that the
arrangements, established by Caesar amidst the pressure of the civil
wars, received the shape which they thereafter in the main retained.
They extended over the old as over the new province; but Augustus
gave up the old Roman territory, along with that of Massilia, from the
Mediterranean as far as the Cevennes, as early as the year 732, {22.}
to the senatorial government, and retained only New Gaul in his own
administration. This territory, still in itself very extensive, was
then broken up into three administrative districts, over each of which
was placed an independent imperial governor. This division attached
itself to the threefold partition of the Celtic country--already
found in existence by the dictator Caesar, and based on national
distinctions--into Aquitania inhabited by Iberians, the purely Celtic
Gaul, and the Celto-Germanic territory of the Belgae; doubtless too it
was intended in this administrative partition to lay some measure of
stress on these distinctions, which tended to favour the progress of
the Roman rule. This, however, was only approximately carried out, and
could not be practically realised otherwise. The purely Celtic region
between the Garonne and Loire was attached to the too small Iberian
Aquitania; the whole left bank of the Rhine, from the Lake of Geneva to
the Moselle, was joined with Belgica, although most of these cantons
were Celtic; in general the Celtic stock so preponderated that the
united provinces could be called "the three Gauls." Of the formation
of the two so-called "Germanies,"--nominally the compensation for the
loss or abeyance of a really Germanic province, in reality the military
frontier of Gaul--we shall speak in the following section.
[Sidenote: Law and justice.]
Matters of law and justice were arranged in an altogether different way
for the old province of Gaul and for th
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/48966