THE AUGUSTAN EMPIRE (44 B.C.—A.D. 70)

CHAPTER XII

THE NORTHERN FRONTIERS UNDER AUGUSTUS

I.

THE PRINCEPS AND THE EMPIRE

ALTHOUGH Augustus had neither the instincts of a soldier nor the ambition of a conqueror, his Principate is a long record of military operations on almost every frontier, from the Northern Ocean to the shore of Pontus, from the mountains of Cantabria to the Ethiopian desert: and on the proud memorial of his achievements the Princeps claimed that he had moved forward the boundaries of every frontier province of the Empire.

While Heaven might promise to the Roman people dominion without limit of space or time, the dangerous extent to which the empire had already grown excited apprehension. Duration and security were surely preferable to breadth of empire. Yet if peace once established were to endure, if the empire were to stand firm for the future, it would have to be enlarged still further—only then would it be possible to reduce foreign policy to the protection of the frontiers, and to banish at the same time the occasion for warfare on a large scale and its unfailing concomitant or sequel, the menace of intestine strife. To the attainment of this end the wars of Augustus were devoted: and the consolidation of the far-flung and haphazard conquests of the Republic demanded a considerable annexation of new territories. The East might remain more or less as Pompey and Antony had left it, but in Europe between the Rhine and the Black Sea there were only two dependent kingdoms, Noricum and Thrace, and they might not always be equal to the task of checking a barbarian invasion or controlling their own subjects: for the rest, the ragged fringes of Roman dominion could nowhere be dignified with the name of a frontier. It was here that the Empire was to receive an extension that gave it internal stability as well as defensible frontiers. While the principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the Republic, Augustus not only designed and nearly carried out a plan of annexation surpassing in magnitude anything attempted by Rome before or since, but also, despite the abandonment of Germany, was able to add to the Empire, in Western and Central Europe, an area as great as that of the Gaul which Caesar conquered. Hitherto, though Rome had extended her sway from Tagus to Euphrates, there had been more chance than design in the process. But when at last the Empire had begotten an Emperor, when one mind and one will directed the armies of the Roman People, it might be expected that a vigorous policy would take the place of inertia and acquiescence. The secret of the real intentions of the great Dictator perished with him, yet it is hard to believe that he would not have wished to do in Illyricum and the Balkans what he had done in Gaul, and win the Danube as well as the Rhine. Be that as it may, this necessary task was reserved for his successor: and it was not until some fifteen years after Actium that the plan of Augustus began to unfold—it had been long matured and well prepared and was not to be launched until he had completed the pacification of Spain, of Africa, and of the Alpine lands and the organization of provinces east and west.

By the terms of his first settlement with the Senate the Princeps took as his portion Spain, Gaul and Syria (with Cilicia and Cyprus), almost the same provinces as those held by Pompey, Caesar and Crassus, but with a significant difference—Cisalpine Gaul was not among them. The most powerful of the provinces and by far the greater number of the legions were his: but of the provinces in which armies were stationed the Senate retained for its proconsuls Africa, Illyricum and Macedonia, and with them about six legions. Augustus could claim with some justification that he had restored a free constitution—he was not the only proconsul with an army, and, as he did not hold Cisalpine Gaul, he was not exerting undue pressure on Rome and Italy. No danger or inconvenience to his own position or to the needs of the Empire was to be apprehended: and though Illyricum or Macedonia might require the attention of the Princeps as much as Gaul or Spain, the arrangement was provisional in form and could be modified at need. It would be well for Augustus to depart to his provinces without delay, to remove from Rome a prestige and a power that might soon become burdensome, and to allow the revived rule of Senate and People to stand alone, without help and without hindrance. Moreover, though the Empire could have no other capital than Rome, its government could be directed, in so far as direction was advisable, by a Princeps residing for long periods in Tarraco, Lugdunum or Samos.

It was to the West that Augustus first turned. Towards the middle of the year 27 he set out for Gaul. There was some expectation that he would emulate the great Julius and invade Britain: but before the end of the year he was in Spain, no doubt his goal from the first.

II.

SPAIN AND AFRICA

Of the provinces acquired by the Romans under the Republic, Spain was one of the earliest to be entered, one of the latest to be pacified. It is easy to invoke that inevitable explanation, the short­comings of Republican policy: it is more profitable to consider the character of the land and its inhabitants.

The definite bounds of the peninsula, the sea and the Pyrenees, lend to it a deceptive appearance of unity and compactness. It is a land of bare plateaus and tangled trackless mountains; roads are few, for the rivers and their valleys are seldom channels of communication, but only so many obstacles to surmount. Spain is indeed more similar to Asia Minor or North Africa than to Gaul. The population is split up into many small divisions, and though the natives cannot oppose a united resistance to an invader, they are, for that reason, all the more difficult to subdue—in which matter the contrast with Gaul is again evident. Warfare in Spain presents an unchanging face—it degenerates into brigandage on both sides. A small army will gradually waste away and finally be overwhelmed, a large force will starve. Nowhere is the country more difficult than in the north and northwest, ever the last home of Spanish independence. The Cantabrian mountains stand in serried masses severing the upland plain from the northern coast, and beyond to the west extend the tangled mountains of Galicia and Northern Portugal, pierced, but not opened up, by the rivers Minho and Douro. On the western coast the Callaeci, it is true, had been more or less accessible to the influence of commerce and the arms of Rome; but the interior and the northern coast were untouched—the shepherds and huntsmen of the hills, the untamed Asturians and Cantabrians, had not merely held their own but had turned to their profit Rome’s enforced neglect and had extended their sway southwards over the agricultural population of the plateau of Leon and Old Castile.

The final conquest was arduous to achieve and would be tedious to record, even if the sources were satisfactory. The Princeps directed in person only the Bellum Cantabricum, the first of the two campaigns of 26 and 25 b.c. He recounted it in his autobiography, and a brief and obscure narrative has preserved a few details. The campaigns of his legates, however, are barely mentioned, and, on the other side, except for a brigand called Corocotta, the heroes of the last fight for Spanish freedom are nameless and unknown. None the less, geography and the un­changing character of Spanish warfare can provide the outline and the colours, even if most of the details are lacking. The routes of armies and the paths of conquest present little variation. There were two Roman armies, probably of three legions each, those of Nearer and of Further Spain; in 26 b.c. Augustus put himself at the head of the former, and undertook the conquest of Cantabria. A beginning had probably been made before this, and it might be conjectured that some at least of the successes for which six Spanish triumphs had been celebrated in the last ten years had been earned in Navarre and had served to open up com­munications with Aquitania over the western Pyrenees; and the western flank of his army may likewise have been made secure.

However that may be, Augustus set out from his base at Segisama (west of Burgos), and the army marched northwards in three columns. The Cantabrians were defeated in battle at Vellica, and the Romans forced their way through the pass which leads by Juliobriga (near Reinosa) down to the coast near Sant­ander. A fleet now co-operated, bringing supplies and landing troops from Aquitania to take the enemy in the rear. Some of the Cantabrians took refuge on the Mons Vindius (perhaps the Penas de Europa), where they were hemmed in and reduced. But there must have been many another band to be hunted down by the Romans as they contended with hunger, heat and flies, with all the discomforts as well as all the perils of mountain warfare against an elusive and resourceful enemy. Augustus, worn-out and danger­ously ill, retired to Tarraco and left to his lieutenants Antistius and Carisius the conduct of the next year’s campaign, the penetration and subjugation of Asturia and Callaecia. This would appear to have been the work of the two armies, advancing from their separate and distant bases. Antistius with the army of Nearer Spain marched westwards, past Le6n and Astorga over the Montanas de Leon into the hill-girt basin of El Vierzo and the upper waters of the river Sil. In the meantime Carisius approached from the south-west. The armies met and beleaguered the Asturians on the Mons Medullius: the fall of this position brought the campaign to a suitable and dramatic conclusion.

The war was now regarded as over, veterans were dismissed and the closing of Janus was decreed. Augustus returned to Rome, which he reached in the course of the next year, 24 b.c. It might appear at first sight that he had completed in two years the process of two centuries and had equalled if not surpassed, on their own ground, the achievements of a Scipio or a Pompey. But he had hardly departed when war flamed up once again and raged almost without intermission: it was not until Agrippa was called to Spain in 19 b.c. that the end came. Most intractable were the Cantabrians—captives sold into slavery slew their masters, escaped to the hills and raised the tribes. Insubordinate soldiers—many of them were elderly and weary of war—as well as a desperate and embittered enemy tried the patience and the resource of Agrippa. At last and at the cost of wholesale massacre the stubborn spirit of the Cantabrians was broken and a war of eight years was brought to an end.

Such was often the fate of a freedom-loving people. Among those wild mountains and barbarous tribes peace could never be permanent unless conquest had been thorough and unrelenting. It will be convenient to mention in brief space the methods which were called for in the Alps, the Balkans and the Taurus as well, and carry forward by a few years the pacification of Spain to the time when Augustus again visited it during his second sojourn in the West in the years 16—13 b.c.

With calm majesty Augustus observes that he preferred not to wipe out utterly such tribes as could safely be spared. Compre­hensive enslavement and massacre were often the only remedy, but the desired end could sometimes be attained if the natives were enlisted in large numbers and transported abroad to spend their dangerous valour in the service of Rome. In this way many regiments of Spaniards came to the Rhine and to Illyricum. The survivors were encouraged or compelled to come down from their mountain strongholds and settle in new towns. This was an old device and it was employed elsewhere—in Gaul the Aedui now abandoned the hill of Bibracte and built Augustodunum in the plain. New urban centres appear in the north-west, Bracaraugusta (Braga), Lucus Asturum (Lugo), Asturica Augusta (Astorga). They were connected by a network of military roads, for the land did not yet appear quite secure, and a large garrison still remained, at first of four or five legions; even when troops were urgently needed on the Rhine after the disaster of Varus, Spain was allowed to retain three legions. These were not the only cities to be built in Spain—the veterans of the wars were provided for, either by new colonial foundations such as Emerita (Merida) and Caesaraugusta (Saragossa), or by the reinforcement of older colonies or towns. Urban civilization and the use of the Latin tongue could now spread over a great part of the peninsula; Roman and native could exploit in peace the wealth of its soil and the produce of its mines. It may have been now (in 16—13 BC). Further Spain was divided, its southern and more civilized part, Baetica, being given to the Senate: the other part, Lusitania, was retained by the Princeps, and to Lusitania the western portion of the newly conquered territory, Asturia and Callaecia, was at first attached; it was subsequently assigned to Nearer Spain (Tarraconensis) when the two Spanish armies were fused into one.

Spain and Northern Africa are intimately connected in geo­graphy and in history; and the provinces of the Senate no less than those of the Princeps have their place in the Augustan scheme of consolidation. The year of the final pacification of Spain, 19 b.c., witnessed the celebration of an African triumph that was long to be remembered. Cornelius Balbus made an expedition to the land of the Garamantes in Fezzan far to the south of the region of the Syrtes and reached Garama, their capital. It might be inferred that this distant expedition was not undertaken until some measure of order and security had been established nearer home. Triumphs had also been earned by Balbus’ predecessor and by three earlier proconsuls between 34 and 28 b.c. A spectacular performance may eclipse but it cannot disprove more solid achievements. Hardly any details have been preserved in history—a fact which illustrates how capricious and fragmentary, in Africa as in other regions, is the record of the wars of the age of Augustus. Enough survives, however, to refute the opinion that only peaceful provinces had been left to the Senate in 27 b.c. The memory of Carthage and the food-supply of the capital magnified the im­portance of Africa: that Augustus should have resigned Africa to a proconsul is evidence both of the strength of his own position and of the art with which he disguised it.

Caesar converted the kingdom of Numidia into a province called Africa Nova; and after the death of Bocchus in 33 b.c. all Mauretania lapsed to Rome. Though Augustus had founded a dozen military colonies in Mauretania, he can hardly have desired to retain this region as a province, if he could help it, and govern directly the whole of North Africa from the shore of the Atlantic to the Syrtes with a frontier nearly a thousand miles in length. A client-prince was required. The last king of Numidia had left a son. In the enforced leisure of exile the young Juba turned his mind to the pursuits of science and letters: at the bidding of a stern taskmaster he now assumed the cares of war and government. In 25 b.c. Augustus made him king of Mauretania, to which was attached a considerable part of the dominions of his father. In this same year another instrument of imperial policy, Amyntas the king of Galatia, met his end in the execution of his duty and was slain by the wild tribes of the Taurus. Juba was to enj oy a long reign—but not without risk of his life. His large Mauretanian kingdom covered and defended the Roman province of Africa on the west and south-west, and it was his task to exercise what control he could over the tribes of the plateau and the desert, the Gaetulians—for such was the name generally applied to all the nomad peoples on and beyond the ill-defined southern borders of Mauretania and Numidia. In Africa, as elsewhere, the settled agricultural peoples presented few problems—if they did not welcome Roman protection they could easily be harried and conquered: the tribes of the mountain, the steppe and the desert were elusive and intractable.

Cornelius Balbus had made the name of Rome known and respected among the proverbially distant Garamantes; and the Marmaridae who dwelt south of the province of Cyrene were dealt with by P. Sulpicius Quirinius at an uncertain date. Yet disturbances could not fail to occur. In a.d. 5—6 Cossus Cornelius Lentulus terminated with success a formidable Gaetulian War and bequeathed a cognomen to his son. The natives had revolted from the control of King Juba and had inflicted severe losses on Roman troops that had been dispatched against them. Next to nothing is known of these operations, but the analogy of warfare in North Africa before or since provides some idea of the diffi­culties that must have confronted the Romans, and permits the conjecture that they had lasted for some time. In the reign of Tiberius the insurgent leader Tacfarinas pursued his depredations and evaded capture for seven years.

After a.d. 6 only one legion was stationed in Africa (III Augusta, probably at Ammaedara, near Theveste). During the revolt of Tacfarinas, however, another legion had to be summoned. It might therefore be doubted whether the African garrison had been quite as small as one legion in an earlier period of unrest.

III

THE ALPS

The first decade of the principate of Augustus was devoted to preparation and consolidation, the second to new and extensive conquest. These two periods are bridged by the subjugation of the Alpine regions which is at the same time the last stage of the one and the first of the other. In 16 b.c. begins Augustus’ second sojourn in the provinces of the West. That a German raid across the Rhine in the previous year and a defeat which Lollius the governor of Gallia Comata suffered, but very soon retrieved, was the cause or even the occasion of his journey is highly doubtful. Eleven years before, Augustus had halted at Narbo on the way to Spain, but his stay had been brief, and Gallia Comata must sooner or later claim his undivided attention. He now came to Lugdunum and during the next three years completed the organization of the Gallic provinces. He was also able to visit Spain once more. In these years his frontier policy begins to assume nobler propor­tions and a clearer outline.

While the legions made war and conquests far away, Northern Italy was still exposed to the raids of petty Alpine tribes; and al­though Gaul had been in Roman hands for a generation, the passes which provide the shortest and most convenient routes to Central Gaul and the Upper Rhine, the Little and the Great St Bernard, were not yet available for troops or traders. North of the Great St Bernard the tribes of the Vallis Poenina (the Valais) forbade access, to the south the Salassi of the Vai d’Aosta. Caesar had tried, but in vain, to gain control of this all-important pass and quite recently the Salassi had defied armies sent against them. Their impunity was short-lived: in 25 b.c. Terentius Varro applied the ruthless measures that were here and elsewhere necessary, and all but blotted out the very name of the Salassi. Forty-four thousand of them, almost all who survived the massacre, were sold into slavery in the market of Eporedia. In this way the approach from the south was secured: the northern side of the pass cannot have been neglected, and it is an attractive conjecture that a success won by Marcus Vinicius in this same year set the seal upon the pacification of the Valais. After this nothing is recorded until 17 or 16 b.c. when P. Silius Nerva, proconsul of Illyricum, reduced the tribes of the valleys from Como eastwards to Lake Garda, and probably also the Venostes of the Upper Adige (Vai Venosta, Vintschgau). Taking advantage of his absence, Pannonians and raiders from Noricum came down and harried Istria. This was the cause, or at least the pretext, of the incorporation of the kingdom of Noricum which followed either at once or after no long interval.

A more spectacular campaign could now be launched. The southward-facing valleys of the Alps had been occupied or blocked: to complete the work it was thought necessary to pass beyond the principal chain of the Alps, cut off and isolate the northern valleys and, by subduing the Raetians of the Tirol and eastern Switzerland and the Vindelicians of Bavaria, win possession of all the land that slopes down to the Danube. In 15 b.c. Tiberius was to march eastwards with legions from Gaul, his brother Drusus northwards, no doubt with a part of the army of Illyricum. Drusus appears to have used the route which the Via Claudia Augusta was to follow, up the broad Val Venosta and over the Pass of Resia (the Reschenscheideck) to the valley of the Inn; and one of his columns may have crossed the Brenner, despite the gorges of the Isarco (Eisack) and the ferocity of the Breuni and Genauni. From the valley of the Inn his troops could march across the mountains by easy passes into Bavaria. In the meantime Tiberius, after winning a battle beside Lake Constance, was also ready to invade Bavaria. The brothers met, overran the land and carried their conquests as far as the Danube.

It was a signal triumph for the arms of Rome and the household of the Princeps, and Horace was persuaded to recall to service his ageing lyric Muse and celebrate the exploits of the stepsons of Augustus. It was the rapid termination of a long process, and while it crowned the exertions, it may have obscured the merits of others less fortunate. None the less this rapidity and ease of con­quest admits of another explanation. In many parts the long, broad Alpine valleys provided attractive lines of march and lines of communication: and the Alps could be crossed by passes which were quite easy of access. For the natives who dwelt in the valleys there was no escape save to a death of hunger and cold on the high peaks. It was not so in the broken ravines and wooded hills of Northwestern Spain and the Balkans, or in the marshlands and forests of Germany.

High on the mountain side above Monaco was erected the Trophy of Augustus to commemorate the pacification of the Alps from end to end, from the upper to the lower sea, and to bear record of the names of the tribes that had been subdued. Augustus claimed to have made war on none of them without just cause or provocation—a protestation which might perhaps have been spared. Italy at length had peace from their inroads and was no longer to require military protection. Cisalpine Gaul could now become in the fullest sense a part of Italy—its union with Italy in 42 b.c. does not seem to have been maintained without interruption. This region had always been fertile and populous; it was now to enjoy a period of exceptional prosperity, and develop its resources by trade with the lands beyond the Alps. Its thriving cities were the admiration of the traveller, and this breeding ground of legionary soldiers and civil servants was the very core of the strength of the Roman Empire.

The new territories were not organized in a uniform manner. In the valleys that slope southwards towards the Po the practice of placing the native population under the charge and control of the cities was continued and extended. For example in the Vai d’Aosta a new colony, Augusta Praetoria, was built on the site of Varro’s camp, and a few Salassi who had been spared were ‘attributed’ to it. Brixia likewise received the tribes of Val Camonica and Vai Trompia,Tridentum the Anauni. In the West, the Maritime Alps had been reduced in 14 b.c. and were placed under an equestrian governor. In the Cottian Alps M. Julius Cottius, the son of a native prince, ruled with the name and rank of a Roman prefect. As the reward of a wise and timely submission, his dominions were preserved and even augmented: and, guided by gratitude or policy, he improved the road across the pass of the Mont Genevre. The peaceful and civilized kingdom of Noricum had long been in a position of amicable dependence; but its purpose had been served, and very soon after 15 b.c., if not just before that date, the Romans took charge of its destiny. The Raetians, Vindelicians and the four tribes of the Vallis Poenina were subsequently governed by an equestrian prefect or procurator. At first, however, there appears to have been a garrison of two legions in the land (until a.d. 9), at Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), in order to hold it in subjection, to protect it from invasion—the Marcomanni were still near at hand in the valley of the Main and had not yet migrated to Bohemia—and to co-operate, when the time should come, in the conquest of Germany.

With the annexation of Noricum Roman control now extended down the Danube as far as Vienna. Italy no longer needed the protection of the army of Illyricum, which was free to operate against the Pannonians and Dalmatians. It is time to discuss the reasons that may have moved Augustus and his military advisers to conceive the ambitious plan of conquest which now begins to unfold in Illyricum—and in Germany as well.

IV

THE NORTHERN FRONTIER OF THE EMPIRE

Northern Italy could never feel safe until the raids of Alpine tribes had been brought to an end; the coast lands of Dalmatia were exposed to like visitations, and the warlike peoples on the borders of Macedonia had seldom cheated a governor of his triumph. The security of these civilized regions, however, is only a partial explanation of the end which the policy of Augustus sought to attain. The watershed of the Alps might have provided Italy with a natural frontier on the north. But conquest passed beyond the Alps, and the extension of Illyricum to the Danube is also part of a larger plan. Nor is it to be believed that the security of the Gallic provinces demanded the conquest of Germany and Bohemia. Both before and after the wars of Augustus the Rhine provided an adequate frontier. If the Elbe were to replace it, the Elbe would have to be defended no less than the Rhine, and legions would still be required to hold down the Gauls. Such an advance would be no solution of the Gallic and German problems —if anything, an added danger. Yet it was contemplated by the sober intelligence of Augustus and prosecuted for twenty years. Other reasons must therefore be sought: they will perhaps be discovered if the European frontiers of die Empire are examined, not separately, but together, with Illyricum as central in position and foremost in importance.

Among the dangers revealed by the Civil Wars were two most ominous—that an army could make an emperor and that there might even be two Empires, an Eastern and a Western. The problems that confronted Augustus might perhaps be solved in the same way, in so far as they admitted a final solution: it was his design to make the Empire stable and secure by giving it a broad territorial basis and frontiers easily defended. The army had now become in fact, if not in name, a standing army. And, apart from the cost of its upkeep and the scarcity of recruits of a suitable stamp, the grave political menace which the army presented by its very existence was another good reason for keeping it as small as was safe. For the moment no enemy threatened the Empire: but what of the future? The Cimbri might come again, another Mithridates might rise, another Burebista, perhaps both at once. It would therefore be well to enlarge the Empire and create a continuous line of defence from sea to sea. What was required was a shortening not so much of frontiers as of communications, for it is not the mere length of a frontier that matters—it is the danger of its being attacked and the ease with which it can be reinforced. By their lines of communication both armies and empires stand or fall: the quicker the routes available between points of danger the fewer troops are required.

Hitherto the communications of Italy with Gaul and Macedonia had been deplorably circuitous and difficult. Before Augustus took in hand the conquest of the Alps, Roman armies had not been able to use the passes of the Little and the Great St Bernard leading to Central Gaul and the Upper Rhine. To Macedonia there was no land route at all in Roman hands, for the Dalmatian coast does not lend itself to the passage of an army even in times of peace. Short of the valley of the Save there is no route—between the Save and the coast lies Bosnia, one of the most pathless and isolated regions in Europe. Of the old road from Italy to the valley of the Save, across the low eastern gateway of Italy, the Julian Alps, the Romans had long been aware. Here Italy was most vulnerable, here Philip V of Macedon had planned to send over a horde of Bastarnae. It was a long time before the Romans ventured to advance beyond the Julian Alps and when they did it was for the better protection of Italy or in order to get into touch with the Dalmatian coast. It is indeed surprising that it was left to Augustus to win for Rome the overland route to the Balkans, the route which was to be the very backbone of the Empire. Itran from Aquileia to Emona, from Emona down the Save to Siscia, Sirmium, Singidu- numand beyond to Naissus, and thence south-eastwards by Serdica to Byzantium. This is the only route by which in our day the kingdom of Yugoslavia can be traversed from end to end with some measure of rapidity and comfort. Control of this road—and of the other way to Sirmium, that from Poetovio down the Drave to Mursa—was a necessity which could no longer be postponed. The control of these routes brought with it the natural extension of Roman Illyricumasfaras the Danube, from Vienna to Belgrade. By the conquest of Raetia and the annexation of Noricum the Romans had just won the south bank of the great river as far down as Vienna, and this further conquest might be expected to follow, and did follow, without delay. An enlarged Ulyricum would thus bind Macedonia to Italy and, through easy passes in the Eastern Alps, bring it much nearer to Gaul and the Upper Rhine. A direct route between Bale and Belgrade represents a considerable saving in time and therefore in troops.

The value of Illyricum is manifest, its conquest is the logical and necessary sequel of all that had gone before it. Not so Germany—it is almost an afterthought, a further development on a large scale, an experiment which if unsuccessful need not be ruinous. It had been found necessary to extend Illyricum as far as the Danube; it might also be profitable to advance in Germany at the same time, if thereby frontiers and communications could be shortened still farther. To the east the broad estuary of the Elbe gave promise of a river that might replace the Rhine as a frontier; and its sources southwards could not be far from the middle course of the Danube. Beyond the forests of Central Germany and the Bohmer Wald there might be open country, and it was no doubt known that there were fertile lands in Saxony about the middle course of the Elbe and in the heart of Bohemia. Imperfect geographical knowledge may well have encouraged undue hopes both of the ease with which such a conquest could be made and of the advantages which would accrue from it: but it was worth the attempt, and only invasion and exploration could give a final answer. Gaul had proved an acquisition of inestimable value. After a rapid conquest the natives appeared to acquiesce in their subjugation. Germans west of the Rhine were seen to be amenable to civilization and loyal to Rome—might not their wilder kinsmen to the east be subdued and incorporated? The annexation of Germany and Bohemia would provide a shorter frontier and a shorter line of communication, substituting for the line Cologne—Bale—Vienna the line Hamburg—Leipzig—Prague—Vienna. It would also leave no room in Central Europe for a power to grow up dangerous to Rome, and it would broaden yet further and consolidate still more firmly the western half of the Empire and thereby ensure its preponderance, in peace as in war, over the East. But this grandiose design was subsidiary to the Roman advance in Illyricum. Even were it to be postponed or abandoned, the work of Augustus would not be incomplete. It was Illyricum that held the Empire together and bound East to West, whether the frontier was to follow Elbe or Rhine.

Reasons such as these must be invoked to explain the frontier policy of Augustus and the plan of conquest which began to unfold during his second sojourn in the provinces of the West. The time was now ripe, the army was ready. The pacification of Spain had set free several legions for service on the northern frontiers, and the conquest of the Alps enabled the legions of Illyricum to turn their arms eastwards. In 27 b.c. the armies of the Gallic pro­vinces, of Illyricum and of Macedonia, probably did not number more than ten or eleven legions. Now, however, in 13 b.c., if we may assume that the armies had reached the strength which they probably had in a.d. 6, as there is some reason to believe, there were no fewer than fourteen or fifteen legions available. Moreover it was in this year that the conditions of military service were for the first time made fixed and definite, so that the army was at last recognized as a standing army. The veterans of the old army had been used up in the Spanish wars or settled in colonies. For the future the legionary was to receive a bounty in money at the end of his period of service. A large number of soldiers were thus remunerated in the years 7—2 b.c., and it is tempting to infer that they represent the troops of the new army, recruited since Actium, well-chosen and well-trained, with all the qualities and none of the failings of veterans. They had shown their mettle in the campaign of 15 B.C.; and Augustus intended to get good value from them in the great wars of conquest of 12—9 b.c., when they were at their best and just before they were due for dismissal.

It is therefore evident that the date 13 b.c. has a significance of its own. Augustus returned to Rome, and the Senate decreed that an altar of Pax Augusta should be set up. Drusus remained in Gaul, to open his campaigns in the following year. In Illyricum, Agrippa and Vinicius had already begun what the Romans called the Bellum Pannonicum

V

ILLYRICUM AND THE BALKANS

Of the wars against Pannonians and Dalmatians in 13—9 b.c., as a result of which the bounds of the province of Illyricum were extended as far as the Danube, the written record amounts to a few sentences, vague as well as brief. It can, however, be interpreted and supplemented with the help of the fuller narrative of the second conquest of these same regions twenty years later, the suppression of the great revolt of the Pannonians and Dalmatians in a.d. 6—9 for the same conditions of geography and therefore of warfare prevailed in conquest and reconquest alike. It was mainly for the sake of the land route to the Balkans that the conquest was required, and the first and necessary stage of the conquest was to win control of the valley of the Save. From the coast the interior cannot be conquered and has never been conquered—the huge mass of the Dinaric Alps severs Dalmatia from Bosnia, a Mediterranean from a Central European land. Roads are few and difficult, the rivers form gorges or waterfalls. It is only from the north that Bosnia can be invaded, and then not easily, from the valley of the Save along, or rather parallel to, its tributaries, the Una, Vrbas and Bosna. Before the Dalmatians, the Illyrian population in the heart of Bosnia, can be dealt with, the Pannonians, the Celtic agricultural population of Croatia and Slavonia, must first be mastered. An invader can occupy the valley of the Save either from the direction of Italy or from the Balkans, his base can be either Siscia or Sirmium; but, in order to win and control it, it may be expedient or even imperative that there should be an army at each of these positions.

To form some conception of the nature and extent of the con­quest achieved it is necessary to estimate how much of the vast area which Roman Illyricum (the later provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia) was soon to embrace, from the Adriatic to the Danube, was already in Roman hands, and how far the pacification of the Balkan lands had been carried forward. The campaigns of Octavian in 35—33 b.c. had been modest in scope and design, modest also, though solid and satisfactory, in achievement; and so, when war with Antony broke out, Northern Italy was secure and there was no fighting in Dalmatia. In the north, in Croatia, Octavian had seized the strong place of Siscia, which can serve as a base not only for a further advance, but also for the better protection of Italy. Farther than this his armies do not seem to have gone: in the south, in Dalmatia, they did not pass beyond the Dinaric Alps. Nor did Octavian come into conflict with the most populous and powerful of the Pannonians, the Breuci, below Siscia, about the middle course of the Save. He cannot therefore have conquered any of the great Bosnian tribes of the interior. These still remained to be dealt with by Tiberius, for it was Tiberius who subdued the ‘nations of the Pannonians which no Roman army had ever approached’. By ‘Pannonians’ are to be understood in the first place the tribes of the valleys of Save and Drave, especially the Breuci; but also some of the tribes of Bosnia such as the Ditiones, Maezaei and Daesitiates, which were usually called Dalmatian and which later belonged to the Roman province of Dalmatia, but which a well-informed contemporary reckons as Pannonian. That a Roman army had approached any of these tribes before the campaigns of Tiberius is neither recorded nor credible. It appears therefore that after the campaigns of Octavian, Roman Ulyricum comprised only Dalmatia, the Hercegovina, Carniola and most of Croatia: the greater part of Slavonia, Bosnia, and Serbia still maintained its independence.

In the south-east also much remained to be done. Crassus had broken the power of the Bastarnae and hurled them back over the river. The eastern part of the region later known as Moesia had been the scene of his exploits, but it does not seem to have been brought directly under Roman administration, and farther west there were tribes still independent—the frontiers of Macedonia had been secured rather than extended. After Crassus there is obscurity, fitfully lit up by raids and risings here and there. Trouble might be expected from two sources. North of the Danube were the Dacians and other tribes, ever ready to profit by any disturbance, while to the south the Romans had to rely upon the kingdom of the Odrysian Thracians to maintain peace and hold down the wild tribes of Haemus and Rhodope. It was no easy task, and the intervention of Rome was often needed, especially against the Bessi, turbulent and resentful because the charge of the national sanctuary of Dionysus had been taken from them. Thus Lollius the proconsul of Macedonia had to help Rhoemetalces, uncle and guardian of the sons of Cotys, about 19—18 b.c. A year or two later came a Sarmatian raid across the Danube; and the Dentheletes of the upper valley of the Strymon and the Scordisci from Serbia harried Macedonia. When the Scordisci are next heard of they are friendly to Rome, acting in concert with Tiberius against the Pannonians in 12 b.c. It is therefore difficult to resist the conclusion that there had been some Roman advance from the south-east, to secure firmly the Serbian bank of the Danube and to occupy Sirmium as a base for an army to take the Pannonians in the rear. In one of the years 13, 12 or 11 b.c. the whole of Thrace rose in arms. To the valour of barbarians the natives united a religious fervour which made them scorn danger or death. This inflammable material was kindled by a priest of the Bessi. Rhescuporis the prince was slain, his uncle Rhoemetalces, deserted by his troops, was pursued into the Chersonese. This formidable rising was only quelled after three years of hard fighting by L. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 15 b.c.), who was brought from Pamphylia to Thrace. To account for the spread of the revolt and the summoning of Piso it would be tempting, but perhaps unnecessary, to assume that the proconsul of Macedonia and his army were occupied farther to the north-west, towards or near Sirmium.

It is clear enough that the task which confronted the generals of Augustus from the Alps to the Balkans was arduous and considerable. In 13 b.c. operations were begun against the Pannonians by Marcus Vinicius, and Agrippa was soon called to the scene; after his death in the next year Tiberius took charge. With the Scordisci as his allies he reduced the Pannonians. The road from Siscia to Sirmium was now firmly in Roman hands, the tribes of the interior cut off from the north, and Bosnia could be penetrated and subdued. In the following year, 11 b.c., the Pannonians rose again in his absence, but he reduced both them and the Dalmatians. Only local rebellions are recorded in the next two years, and there was not much left to be done in 8 b.c. by Tiberius’ successor, Sex. Appuleius. Roman armies may have traversed Bosnia, buttherewas little fighting—the strategical superiority and rapid movements of the conquerors compelled the natives to make a hurried submission and seemed to render unnecessary a thorough subjugation, and a thorough occupation. Fifteen years later the price of this optimism had to be paid in full.

Northern Pannonia had fallen without a blow. The exact limits of the kingdom of Noricum on its eastern side cannot be ascertained, but they may have extended as far as the great highway to the North, the old Amber Route from Poetovio by Savaria and Scarbantia to the Danube at Carnun turn. The rest of the land be­tween Drave and Danube was either empty or occupied by small. 

Dio places the outbreak in 11 b.c., but the war lasted three years, and 11 b.c. may well be the last of these years, not the first tribes and remnants of tribes, lacking the power or the desire to resist. The dominion of Rome was preferable to the pitiless in­cursions of the Dacians.

In this way the frontier was advanced to the Danube and a vast area was incorporated in the province of Illyricum. To the south­east Piso had established peace and order in Thrace; it may have been now, but it was perhaps not until more than a decade had elapsed, that the army in these parts was transferred from the proconsul of Macedonia to an imperial legate of Moesia.

In the meantime Drusus had been pursuing his triumphant career in Germany.

VI

GERMANY

Gaul had soon succumbed before the rapid and crushing blows of Caesar. The calm of exhaustion passed into acquiescence in the burdens and benefits of Roman rule, and the peace which prevailed was such as to belie the old renown of the Gauls and move Roman and German alike to surprise and even to scorn. There were disturbances, it is true—Caesar, whose aim it had been to strike at the most powerful tribes and seize the most important lines of communication, had neglected the western extremities of the land, and the pacification of Aquitania was not completed till 27 b.c.: moreover, it was some time before the Roman control was firm enough to prevent feuds and discords such as those which more than anything else had delivered Gaul into their hands. The exaction of tribute and the introduction of the census provoked sporadic risings, even in 12 b.c. None the less Drusus was able to invade Germany leaving behind him a Gaul that was loyal and peaceful—and so it was to remain, even when a Roman army had been destroyed. Beyond the Rhine was freedom, but how far that freedom excited envy or desire among the Gauls is doubtful. The Roman dominion was irksome but inevitable: it was supported and justified by the best of arguments, force of arms and an experience of German invasions which was still recent and which the Gauls had no wish to see renewed. The existence of the Germans, then, was one of the surest bonds of Gallic loyalty.

It has been maintained that the conquest of Germany was necessary if Gaul were to be both secure from invasion and loyal to Rome; on the contrary, it was the tranquillity of Gaul which made a conquest of Germany possible as well as desirable.

Caesar had made the Rhine the frontier of the Empire, the limit between civilization and barbarism. Though a river may be a convenient line of demarcation, it seldom deserves to be called a natural frontier. The Rhine was a German river: to the west of it dwelt many tribes of real or fancied German origin; they were firm in their allegiance to Rome, and their claim to German blood, for what it was worth, so far from being the expression of a community of sentiment or interest with the free Germans, was little more than an assertion of superiority over their Gallic neighbours. The friendly Ubii had been transplanted by Agrippa at their own request; the Vangiones, Nemetes and Triboci, remnants of the hosts of Ariovistus, had been given lands in the Palatinate and Alsace and in return were expected to guard the bank of the Rhine. There was, indeed, little danger of another invasion. Caesar had broken the power of Ariovistus; his massacre of the Usipetes and his crossing of the Rhine had struck terror into the Germans and had arrested or diverted their westward advance for many generations. It was not in order to hold the line of the Rhine that legions were required in the Gallic provinces. In spite of apparent peace in Gaul the conservative Roman took no risks with any enemy known and feared for several centuries. When the ravages of war had been repaired and its memory forgotten the Gauls might take thought of their ancient glory and their present resources. The land was rich, its population abundant and vigorous. The Gauls had ever been devotedly loyal to their chieftains and brave with that headlong valour which was the wonder and the terror of the more civilized nations of antiquity. The great roads of Agrippa, radiating from Lugdunum, opened up the country, and, for some ten years or so after 27 b.c. there were two armies in the interior of Gaul, comprising five or six legions, the armies of Comata and of Aquitania (to which Narbonensis was attached between 27 and 22 b.c.). Detachments of auxiliary troops were stationed at points of strategic importance. The Rhine however was lightly held—in the main by the militia of the native tribes. Though a serious invasion was tfhlikely, there might still come raiding parties of restless and predatory Germans, as even later when the bank of the Rhine was guarded by a chain of Roman legions and auxilia.

A raid of this kind by the Sugambri and their allies the Tencteri and Usipetes had taken Lollius off his guard in 17 b.c. They soon repented of what they had done and gave hostages for good behaviour in the future. Order was restored—and, if that were not enough, there might have followed a few punitive expeditions which would employ Gallic troops in Roman service against the common enemy and weld Gaul more firmly to Rome. But the Roman expeditions launched in 12 b.c. are of a different kind and on a greater scale—they are a part of a large and comprehensive design to secure a shorter frontier for the Empire and shorter lines of communication between Gaul or Germany and the Roman armies in the Danubian lands. How far the advance might proceed, no man could tell—exploration and invasion must go hand in hand. When Augustus departed from Gaul in 13 b.c. he had completed the organization of the Gallic provinces, and its crown and symbol, the Altar of Lugdunum, was to be dedicated by Drusus in the next year. The legions had been brought up from their camps in the interior to bases on the Rhine, and with them and the levies of Gaul, Drusus was to invade Germany.

To a man from the Mediterranean Germany presented a forbidding aspect. He looked in vain for those fruits whose names meant civilization itself, the olive and the grape, and saw instead a waste of marsh and woodland, a realm of damp and cold. From the Rhine as far east as the land of the Dacians and beyond, it was averred, stretched one great forest, nine days’ march in breadth from north to south. Error and exaggeration were prevalent both about the land and its inhabitants. Yet it was not all forest—in the Wetterau, the valley of the Neckar and parts of Saxony were fertile regions. Even within the Hercynian forest there were patches of open country, as in Bohemia. The natives themselves, though moralists and rhetoricians for their own ends delighted to endow them with the ideal qualities of primitive virtue or primitive ferocity, were far from being nomads, unspoiled by the practice of agriculture and the habit of settled life. It might seem that they, like their kinsmen west of the Rhine, German or Celt (for there appeared to be little difference) might not prove impervious to civilization. Yet in this easy appreciation of them the Romans made a profound miscalculation. The truth was that the Germans were centuries behind the Gauls in material culture and that a better comparison was with the Thracians and Dalmatae in their un­readiness to accept either the culture or the domination of Rome. Nor was it an easy task to penetrate and control the country, to crush the resistance and curb the spirit of the warrior tribes. The obstacles were so considerable and movement was so slow that distances were easily multiplied. The chief problem that confronts a general, how to transport and feed an army, assumed formidable proportions in Germany. Caesar in Gaul had been able to move rapidly because he found roads, bridges and food wherever he went; he had been able to bring the enemy to battle because they had towns and property to defend. In Germany the invader had. to make his own roads and bring with him his own supplies: the Germans were elusive and might be inaccessible. The army which Drusus could transport from the Rhine to the Elbe was thus re­stricted to a size too small perhaps for a thorough conquest, while the larger forces employed by Germanicus were slow and unwieldy, despite his use of the approach by water up the great rivers—only the urgent needs of transport would have induced the Romans to brave the perils of the Northern Ocean.

The ultimate goal of the Romans appears to have been the Elbe near or not very far above Magdeburg, and the routes which their expeditions followed can be recognized in outline but cannot be reproduced in detail. The winter camps of the legions were established on the Rhine by Drusus, not in positions of defence but as bases for invasion, and the principal, though surely not the only, camps of Augustan date were Vetera (near Xanten) facing the valley of the Lippe, and Moguntiacum (Mainz) opposite the confluence of the Main and the Rhine; both Lippe and Main could provide water-transport for some distance. From Vetera the Weser near Minden could be reached in two ways, by going north-east to the Ems and then keeping to the north of the Wesergebirge and Teutoburger Wald, or by moving up the valley of the Lippe and then through those wooded hills. Neither of these routes was without difficulty, and the former was probably avoided until a causeway had been built across the morasses between Rhine and Ems. But from Vetera by way of the Lippe it was also possible to reach the Weser higher up, near Cassel where it takes its origin from the union of the Fulda and the Werra. Towards this region, however, the most easy and attractive route came from the south—from Mainz over the Rhine, across the fertile Wetterau and northwards through the Hessian Gap between Taunus and Vogelsberg. From these two most important strategic positions, Minden and Cassel, half-way between Rhine and Elbe, armies could proceed eastwards to the Elbe, from Minden passing north of the Harz to Magdeburg, or from Cassel south of it to the Saale near Halle and then to the Elbe.

After the preliminary exploration of his first campaign in 12 b.c., Drusus seems to have made the region near Cassel his goal, approaching it from Vetera (in 11 b.c.), then from Moguntiacum (10 and 9 b.c.). This, though in reverse order, was the method followed by Charlemagne—in his first campaign against the Saxons he marched north from Frankfort, in his second eastwards up the Ruhr. Germanicus, however, sought to reach the Elbe by way of Minden, partly because the unwieldy numbers he employed made necessary the use of the Ems (and perhaps the Weser) for transport. Drusus, it is true, built a canal to connect the Rhine with the Ocean through the lakes of Holland, but did not again use it after his first experiment. It may be appropriate at this point to mention that among other measures taken by him was the erection of auxiliary forts along the Rhine and elsewhere, and the establishment of a base or bases for the fleet. Moreover at the close of his second campaign he built a fort ‘where the Elison joins the Lippe,’ and another ‘in the lands of the Chatti near the Rhine. ’ The site of the latter may be Hochst, where the Nidda runs into the Main just below Frankfort, or the low hill of Friedberg in the Wetterau. The former presents a tangle of problems: the Latin historians mention Aliso as the site of a fort, and excavation has revealed at Haltern about thirty miles up the Lippe the remains of two forts, one by the water’s edge, the other on the Annaberg close by, and of two legionary camps, the one above the other; and further, at Oberaden some twenty miles farther east, a camp for two legions. In the present state of knowledge it might be claimed that the remains at Haltern are numerous and varied enough to provide a localization both for the fort of Drusus and for the Aliso of Roman writers.

The tale of Drusus’ campaigns is soon told. In 12 b.c. the Sugambri and their allies sought to forestall his attack but he fell upon them as they were crossing the Rhine, routed them and ravaged Westphalia. Later in the year he made a naval expedition in the North Sea and won over the Frisians—the Batavi were probably in alliance already: but the retreating tide left his ships stranded, and without the help of the Frisii he would have been in sore straits. In the next year he subdued the Usipetes north of the Lippe, bridged that river and marched eastwards through the territory of the Sugambri; he found the way open and was able to advance as far as the Weser because the Sugambri had turned their arms against the Chatti. They were waiting for him when he returned. He was trapped in a narrow defile at a place called Arbalo, but the overhaste of the barbarians robbed them of their prey. Drusus now made Moguntiacum his chief base instead of Vetera. He invaded the land of the Chatti in 10 b.c., and again in the next year, in his last and greatest campaign. Then he struck at the Marcomanni, turned northwards and marched as far as the Cherusci and from there eastwards to the Elbe. He did not cross it; and as he returned he succumbed to an accident and died in the summer camp, somewhere between the Saale and the Rhine.

Tiberius now took charge in Germany. The troublesome Sugambri were made to feel the resentment of Rome. Such as survived were transported across the Rhine to its western bank. No open resistance now raised its head and Tiberius could depart in 7 b.c. to enjoy his triumph and the prospect of a command in the East. Though the admiring Velleius claims that Tiberius had almost reduced Germany to the state of a tributary province, the conquest was far from complete. Many regions remained untrodden and unsubdued, and there was no lasting occupation through the winter. By the swift marches of a small and highly trained army Drusus had traversed Germany and defeated or intimidated many of the tribes between Rhine and Elbe, but his expeditions were little more than raids; the slow and piecemeal process of permanent subjugation had not begun.

VII.

 MAROBODUUS

The second decade of the Principate now came to an end, and the period of the great wars of conquest was to be succeeded by a breathing-space. The policy of Augustus still moves forward in ordered majesty—its slowness is that of strength, not of weakness or indecision. In the years 7—2 b.c. many veterans who had served in the campaigns of Drusus and Tiberius were dismissed. When another ten or twelve years had elapsed many more would no doubt be ripe for discharge—but they would not receive it until they in their turn had been employed in warfare. And so this third decade is a time of consolidation, of exploration and preparation for a further great advance, the conquest of Bohemia, and, following thereon, the annexation of South Germany.

Tiberius’ departure to Rhodes in 6 b.c. deprived the Empire of a general and the Princeps of a colleague. Though he was not indispensable, though there were other Romans of birth and ability on whose support Augustus could rely, the resentment of Augustus is pardonable. It must have been a time of acute discomfort. He was weary, ageing and disappointed. Agrippa his trusted partner, Drusus the well-beloved were dead, Tiberius was a morose and contumacious exile, the two grandsons were young and untried. To Augustus the most critical, to the historian this period is the most obscure portion of his Principate. The narrative of Dio is fragmentary and defective; and it was hardly to be expected that Velleius Paterculus would care to record the exploits of the men who usurped with the armies of Rome and in the councils of the Princeps the position that had belonged to Tiberius. L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, the husband of a niece of Augustus, held in succession the commands in Illyricum and Germany: to him and to Lentulus, likewise of noble birth, to the new men Vinicius, Quirinius and others the safety of the Empire in these years was committed. The date, sequence and significance of events on the northern frontiers during this decade (6 b.c.—a. d. 4) are for the most part obscure, but some attempt must be made to elucidate or supplement the inadequacy of the written record. One of the chief preoccupations of Roman policy in this period was Bohemia; and though the empire of Maroboduus may not immediately have attained the extent and power that made it seem to the Romans more dangerous indeed than the King’s intentions justified, it will be convenient to adopt it as the central theme.

In his last campaign (9 b.c.) Drusus had attacked the Marcomanni who dwelt in the valley of the Main, and it was perhaps then and with Roman aid or encouragement that a young noble called Maroboduus rose to power among them. He soon persuaded them to migrate to Bohemia to avoid that encirclement and annexation of South Germany which he saw to be the logical end of Roman policy. Here, in a fertile land of old civilization, once the home of the Boii, girt about, like Transylvania, with a ring of forest and mountain, was the seat which nature seemed to have designed for a great empire. The Marcomanni were ever conspicuous among the Suebian tribes, and in Maroboduus they had a leader of remarkable ability. He had been at Rome, he had probably served with Roman armies, like Arminius—and he knew how to use all that he had seen and learnt. He was not content to enjoy merely the respect due to birth or the temporary prestige of a successful adventurer—he set himself to build up a well-organized kingdom based on a large and disciplined army. Secure in his mountain bastion he inspired terror in all his neighbours, and before long extended his dominion northwards over Saxony, Brandenburg and Silesia; at one time or another the powerful nation of the Lugii, the fierce Langobardi and even the proud Semnones acknowledged his sway¹. A power was rising in Central Europe that might threaten the Empire and Italy itself, a power that could be compared to that of Pyrrhus or Antiochus². It appears to have been the aim of Roman policy not merely to prevent the extension of the empire of Maroboduus and then subvert it by force or diplomacy, but to annex that part of it, Bohemia, which they needed if they were to dominate Central Europe themselves and control the route from the Danube to the Elbe.

It is with reference to Bohemia and as preliminary to an attack on Maroboduus that the principal Roman operations of this obscure decade are best interpreted; no fewer than three great expeditions beyond the Danube appear to belong to this period. At some time between 7 and 2 b.c. L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 16 b.c.) crossed the Danube, came upon the Hermunduri who were wandering about in search of lands to settle in, established them ‘in a part of the land of the Marcomanni,’ crossed the Elbe and set up an altar there in honour of Augustus. The Marcomanni had just vacated the region of the Main, and it is in Franconia and Thuringia that the Hermunduri are later to be found; the purpose and direction of the march of Ahenobarbus can therefore be explained. To the Elbe from the Danube the easiest and shortest route runs north-west from Carnuntum across Bohemia: had Ahenobarbus followed it, however, he would surely have encountered the Marcomanni and not the Hermunduri before he reached the Elbe. It would therefore appear that he crossed the Danube higher up, from the side of Raetia, perhaps at Donauworth or Regensburg, and so marched northwards to the sources of the Saale and down the Saale to the Elbe (if so far, for he may have mistaken the Saale for the Elbe): and though he was, or rather perhaps had just been, legate of Illyricum, he may have used the legions which were in Raetia. The purpose of his expedition was to find a way through for an army from the Danube as far as the western entrance of Bohemia and beyond, to the Middle Elbe; one of its results was to isolate Bohemia on the west and facilitate an invasion at some time in the future by interposing between Bohemia and the Chatti and Cherusci the friendly and grateful tribe of the Hermunduri.

A fragmentary inscription records the deeds of an unknown legate of Illyricum, who may, or may not, have been M. Vinicius (cos. 19 b.c.). After passing over the Danube he routed a host of Bastarnae and entered into relations of peace or war with the Cotini, the Anartii and other tribes whose names are not preserved. The Cotini, a Celtic tribe of miners, probably dwelt in the valley of the Gran, the Anartii in north-eastern Hungary, on the northern bounds of Dacia. The occurrence of Bastarnae is surprising but not inexplicable. Pushed away from the Lower Danube they may, like the Sarmatae lazyges a generation later, have come round over the Carpathians to the Middle Danube. The purpose of this expedi­tion was to secure the Middle Danube, and, more than that, to isolate Maroboduus on the eastern side and cut him off from the Dacians by extending Roman influence and even control over the tribes south of the Tatra and the Carpathians. This was a necessary precaution—Bohemia and Transylvania in alliance was a danger that must be averted at all costs, as Domitian was to find. An expedition, or even diplomatic intervention, beyond the Middle Danube would have been pointless, if not impossible, before Tiberius’ campaigns and the extension of Illyricum as far as the Danube, and so it probably belongs to this same period, 6 b.c.—a.d. 4. If the general were Vinicius, it could be more closely dated. Vinicius followed Ahenobarbus in Germany in a.d. i, therefore he might also have been his successor in Illyricum a few years earlier.

After the murder of Burebista and the collapse of his empire the Dacians were broken and divided. Though no longer a menace they were still a nuisance, ever ready to indulge in raids, like the Sarmatians, their neighbours to the south-east. Moreover, they still possessed a part of the Hungarian plain and on this side they had crossed the frozen Danube in the winter of 11—10 b.c. and had carried off much booty. It would thus be necessary before long to humble both Dacians and Sarmatians. Augustus records that his army crossed the Danube and compelled the tribes of the Dacians to submit to the commands of the Roman people: and the Bastarnae, the Scythians, and the kings of the Sarmatae who live on both sides of the river Tanais sought his friendship. This was in the main the work of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus (cos. 18 b.c.), at some date which cannot be accurately determined, but probably falls in this period. From the west he attacked the Dacians, probably using the river Marisus for transport: to the south and south-east he drove away the Sarmatians from the neighbourhood of the Danube. And it was perhaps about the same time (c. A.D. 1— 3?) and in connection with these operations that Aelius Catus transported fifty thousand Getae across to the Thracian bank of the river, ‘where they now dwell under the name of Moesians.’ The area directly under Roman control in these regions would thus be increased, and the army of Illyricum, which hitherto had been available to help, would soon be moved farther north, for the invasion and conquest of Bohemia; so it was perhaps in these years (a.d. 3—4?) that the legions of Macedonia were taken from the proconsul and transferred to an imperial legate of Moesia.

But in Germany in the meantime all had not been tranquil. Ahenobarbus had trouble with the Cherusci (about 1 b.c.), and it was no doubt to render access to their land more easy from the west that he built his famous causeway over the marshy lands between Rhine and Ems, the pontes longi. Vinicius, who came after him, was confronted with a serious rising, and his efforts were not entirely successful. The firm hand of Tiberius was needed, and it was once again at the service of Rome. At his coming the joy and confidence of the soldiers knew no bounds. In a.d. 4 he advanced as far as the Weser and as the result of a campaign that lasted into the winter he received the submission of the tribes of north-western Germany from the Bructeri and the Cherusci as far as the shore of the Ocean. The army passed the winter in quarters far up the valley of the Lippe The next year witnessed a great combined expedition by sea and land. Tiberius defeated the Langobardi and reached the Elbe, where he was met by the fleet which had explored the northern seas as far as the promontory of Jutland. A remnant of the Cimbri made atonement to Rome for the misdeeds of their ancestors, the Charydes and even the Semnones sought the friendship of Augustus. All was now ready for the conquest of the Kingdom of Maroboduus. On the north he had been weakened by the detach­ment of the Semnones; on the east he had been cut off from the Dacians; on the west the Hermunduri would give passage to a Roman army.

Twelve Roman legions marched against Maroboduus in a.d. 6, as he was afterwards to boast—perhaps with some exaggeration: it was the total of the armies of the Rhine, Raetiaand Illyricum. Sentius Saturninus was to march eastwards from Moguntiacum with some of the legions of the Rhine, the troops from Raetia were probably to come northwards in the direction of Nuremberg or Eger to meet him, while Tiberius was to invade Bohemia from the south-east with the army of Illyricum, crossing the Danube at Carnuntum. The campaign was a masterpiece of organization and deserves a proud place in the annals of the military art. The armies and the generals of Augustus have nothing to lose by a comparison with those of any age in the history of Rome. The advance by separate routes to a common goal was a method which had already been practised on a grand scale and in the face of great natural difficulties, in Spain and in the Alps: but the invasion of Bohemia was to be the crowning achievement of Augustan strategy. In this hour the might of Rome had reached its climax; by their rapid marches and disciplined valour the legions had subdued Illyricum and overrun Germany; at the terror of their approach the nations beyond Elbe and Danube had done homage to the majesty of the Roman People. Only Maroboduus remained: but the short hour of triumph was already passing. When the armies of Saturninus and Tiberius were only a few days removed from their goal in the heart of Bohemia, the news came that Illyricum had risen. The situation was critical, but sound judgment was not lacking in Tiberius—or in Maroboduus. They came to terms, by which Maroboduus was recognized as a king and friend of the Roman People. Tiberius could turn southwards—not a moment too soon.

VIII.

THE GREAT REBELLION

When some of the native levies were mustering for the campaign against Maroboduus they saw their own strength and the chance to exert it. The insurrection which began far to the south­east among the Daesitiates, under their chieftain Bato, was at first neglected—the campaign in the north claimed precedence—and soon spread to the Pannonian Breuci who were led by Pinnes and another Bato. Roman merchants were massacred, legionary de­tachments overwhelmed, and before long the whole of the region conquered by Tiberius some fifteen years before had risen in rebellion. One of the prime movers of the revolt asserted that its cause was to be found in the injustices of Roman taxation and recruiting. This interested and partial testimony cannot pass unchallenged—it must be supplemented by the observation that the original conquest had not been thorough and severe enough to ensure that when a new generation grew up it would not seize with alacrity the earliest opportunity that presented itself. The Dalmatians were a fierce intractable Illyrian people, never so happy as when defying law and order, the Pannonians had their share of the Celtic dash and delight in warfare, to which they now added some familiarity with the language and discipline of Rome. It was the first time that these tribes stood united in resistance; to subdue them engaged the generalship of Tiberius and the military re­sources of the Empire for three long years.

With sound strategic instinct Bato the Pannonian swooped down on Sirmium and its Roman garrison. Caecina Severus the legate of Moesia came up in time to rescue it, defeating the enemy, though not without heavy losses to the Romans. Had the Dalmatian been intelligent enough to join his Pannonian namesake, their combined hosts might have overwhelmed the army of Moesia and raised all the Balkans in revolt. Had he turned northwards, Siscia and the road over the Julian Alps into Italy were his: he preferred to waste precious time by attacking Salonae and by sending his raiding bands down the coast as far as Apollonia. When at last he marched northwards, it was too late—Tiberius was hastening back from Bohemia, with Valerius Messallinus, governor of Illyricum, and the Twentieth Legion in the van; after a reverse Messallinus was victorious in a battle fought against great odds, and the whole army reached Siscia. Five legions now stood between the insurgents and the approach to Italy. The Romans held the keys of Illyricum, Siscia and Sirmium, but all that lay between and to the south as far as the Adriatic was in the hands of the enemy, and for some time very little progress could be made against them. Tiberius stood firm in Siscia, taking no risks and waiting for reinforcements. But in the south-east the fate of Sirmium still hung in the balance; the rebels had occupied the Mons Almus (the Fruskagora) to the north of that city, and though defeated in a skirmish by Rhoemetalces the Thracian king, whom Caecina had despatched against them, were able to maintain their position when Caecina himself attacked them. Raids of the Dacians and Sarmatians compelled Caecina to return and protect his own province; he left Rhoemetalces behind to hold up the insurgents and prevent if he could an invasion of Macedonia. Such was the situation through the winter of a.d. 6-7, and indeed for a great part of the next year. The thorough devastation spread both by the insurgents and the Romans made the land a desert. Tiberius hoped to reduce the enemy by the slow process of famine rather than risk battle and the lives of Roman soldiers. He gradually extended his control from Siscia eastwards and southwards and held a large body of the enemy pent up in the hills between Save and Drave (the Mons Claudius).

In Rome, however, the voice of detraction whispered that Tiberius was prolonging the war for purposes of his own. Accustomed to the easy and spectacular successes that till now had crowned the conquests of Augustus, the ignorant or the malevolent despised this cautious strategy. Tiberius stands all the higher be­cause his name is associated with no great battle; and Augustus cannot have wavered in his confidence in a general whose principles of warfare were his own. It was the crisis of the Empire. A sudden turn of fortune shattered the proud hopes that prevailed on the eve of the march against Maroboduus, and revealed how narrow and insecure were the foundations on which that ambitious policy had been erected. It was only with difficulty that the rising in Illyricum could be prevented from spreading. One province arrested and wrecked the frontier policy of the Empire; but what would happen if Germany and Thrace rose at the same time, if Maroboduus threw off his allegiance, if the Dacians appeared in force? In those evil days Augustus is reported to have thought of putting an end to his life. There was discontent at home, famine and pestilence raged in Italy as well as in Illyricum. The soldiers were weary and dejected. Most manifest and alarming was the military weakness of the Em­pire. There were no reserves of strength, recruits for the legions were hard to find, and so no new legions could be raised. Veterans were recalled to the standards, liberated slaves were enrolled in companies (cohortes voluntariorum). Some of these levies were brought to Siscia before the end of the year a.d. 6 by Velleius Paterculus, others in the course of the following year by Germanicus. But where could legions be found? Now as later the Empire worked with military resources which were cut down even below the margin of security. The provincial armies were expected to be more or less self-supporting. The price of this economy had now to be paid. It was not thought safe to move whole legions from the western provinces, and none came from these regions to Tiberius at Siscia: from the East, however, two legions might be temporarily withdrawn to reinforce the south-eastern theatre of the war. The army of Moesia by itself was not strong enough, and it was needed to hold down Thrace and ward off the Dacians and Sarmatians from the southern bank of the Danube: yet it was only with the co-operation of a strong army based on Sirmium that Tiberius could gain control of the valley of the Save, the first and necessary stage of the reconquest of Illyricum. The legions from the East, however, did not arrive until late in the second year of the Revolt —Tiberius may at first have underestimated the resistance of the insurgents, or for some other reason these troops may not earlier have been available.

At last this army was ready to advance; its kernel was com­posed of five legions and it was led by Caecina Severus, legate of Moesia, and by Plautius Silvanus who came from some post in the East. But the enemy had concentrated in force under both the Batos and was waiting to dispute their passage westwards of Sirmium, in the direction of Cibalae (Vinkovci), where the road runs across the narrow neck of firm ground north of the marshes of the Lower Save. If they still held their commanding position on the Mons Almus to the north of Sirmium (and there is no evidence that they did not) they were able to choose the time and place of their attack. This would explain the surprise which they inflicted, but would not excuse the negligence of the Roman leaders. While the army was making ready to encamp the enemy suddenly fell upon it and almost overwhelmed it. Before their impetuous charge the Thracian cavalry broke and fled, and the auxiliaries, both horse and foot, were scattered. Even the legions wavered, and many officers fell; but at length the discipline and tenacity of the common soldier prevailed, and victory was snatched from defeat. Such was the Battle of the Volcaean Marshes—almost one of the greatest disasters in the annals of Rome. Caecina and Silvanus could at last bring their troops to Siscia. And there was now assembled a host such as had never been seen since the Civil Wars—ten legions and over eighty auxiliary regiments, to say nothing of ten thousand veterans, many cohortes voluntariorum and the cavalry of Rhoemetalces. But it was not for such a concentration that the reinforcements were required. After a few days Tiberius escorted them back again whence they had come, to Sirmium. Caecina with a part of the army was no doubt needed in Moesia, but Silvanus was to remain at Sirmium. At last Tiberius had in his hand the means of controlling the valley of the Save, and when he returned to Siscia and put the legions into separate quarters for the winter, it was with the rational confidence that in the next year the Pannonians would be reduced.

In the next year (a.d. 8) all the Pannonians capitulated at_rthe river Bathinus. Famine and the patient strategy of Tiberius had worn them down, treachery did the rest. Bato made the best of a hopeless cause, betrayed Pinnes to the Romans and as a reward became chieftain of the Breuci himself. He was not to enjoy the honour for long—the other Bato, the Dalmatian, captured and slew him and persuaded many of the Pannonians to take up arms again. They were crushed by Silvanus; Bato, giving up these parts for lost, retreated southwards and blocked the defiles leading into Bosnia. The penetration and subjugation of this difficult region, the Bellum Dalmaticum as it was called, was to be the work of the next year. Tiberius, leaving Aemilius Lepidus in charge at Siscia (while Silvanus remained at Sirmium), departed to Rome for the winter.

At the opening of the next campaigning season Lepidus led the army (or part of it) southwards to Tiberius in Dalmatia. The line of his march (Siscia to Burnum?) brought him into country as yet untouched by the war, but he fought his way through it success­fully. The final conquest was to be effected by three separate armies; Lepidus was to operate from the north-west, Silvanus from the north-east, Tiberius from the side of Dalmatia. With Tiberius was his young nephew Germanicus, to whose credit was already to be set the capture of three fortresses, Splonum, Raetinium and Seretium; while the other two armies entered Bosnia from the north, Tiberius in the south hunted down the indomitable Bato. He threw himself into the rocky fastness of Andetrium hard by Salonae, but succeeded in slipping away before it was captured. When one after another the hill forts fell to the Romans, Bato resolved to make his submission. Tiberius spared his life and interned him at Ravenna.

The last embers of the revolt had been stamped out among the Daesitiates in the neighbourhood of Sarajevo and the Pirustae of Montenegro, and the long war was over at last. Scarcely was it known at Rome when there came like a thunderclap the news of disaster in Germany—Varus had perished and with him three of the best legions of the Roman army.

IX.

ARMINIUS

After the last campaigns of Tiberius (a.d. 4 and 5) a deceptive tranquillity brooded over Germany. Even the crisis of a.d. 6 had called forth no echo, and some of the most formidable of the tribes, such as the Cherusci, seemed willing to accommodate themselves to foreign rule—for as yet there was nothing in the Roman occupation that could be called thorough, permanent or oppressive. In the summer the legions might move forward as far as the Weser, but they returned to spend the winter in safety on or not far from the Rhine. Save in the valley of the Lippe no attempt seems to have been made to gain a firm hold on any part of the country by means of a network of roads and fortified positions. The land was not yet ready to be turned into a Roman province. Though an altar had been set up in the town of the Ubii on the western bank of the Rhine to serve as a religious centre for German nobles, very little else seems to have been done—it is difficult to believe that the methods of Roman taxation had been introduced.

From ancient times onward the circumstances surrounding the end of Roman rule in Germany have been an occasion for prejudice and rhetoric. Varus was made the scapegoat for the miscalculations of Roman policy; the contrast between the inertia or benevolence of Varus and the energy or perfidy of Arminius, between the Roman governor and the native prince, was drawn in vivid colours, and artfully employed to personify the opposition between civilization and freedom. In the last emergency Varus does not seem to have displayed the qualities of a general—or even of a soldier; and he may have been better fitted to govern the rich and peaceful province of Syria than a Germany which was still unsubdued. But the shortcomings of Varus mask a more eminent culprit. The choice of Varus as commander of the Rhine army was that of Augustus (Varus had married his great-niece), and the policy of conciliation which appeared to have been responsible for his ruin must have been suggested and imposed by Augustus, anxious at all costs to avert a rebellion like that which was still raging in Illyricum.

On the other side stands Arminius, a figure welcome to the fervid patriot or to the romantic historian. The valour and resource of the young prince of the Cherusci admit of no dispute, his treachery needs no excuse. But in the estimate of his historical importance a certain caution is not out of place. Though it was due in a large measure to his efforts, now and later, that the Romans did not conquer Germany, he was only the leader of a faction even among his own tribesmen, not a champion of the German nation, for no such thing existed. The very name was of recent date, an alien appellation; there was among the Germans little consciousness of a common origin, of a common interest none at all. Arminius himself was a Roman citizen and a Roman knight, and his own people did not preserve the memory of their liberator.

About the disaster, and about its site, there is not much that needs to be said. By the report of a rising some distance away the conspirators persuaded Varus to march out of his summer camp. When the Roman column, encumbered by a heavy baggage-train, was involved in wooded country, the Germans fell upon it. The Romans struggled forward as best they could, but everything was against them. The resolution of Varus failed him and he took his own life. The cavalry fled, but did not escape. One of the praefecti castrorum fell fighting, the other made a capitulation which ended in a massacre. Like the disaster to which Caesar’s legates, Sabinus and Cotta, succumbed, it was the result of an attack on the army while it was marching through difficult country. That is a danger which can befall a good general, and from which he may be lucky to escape, as were Drusus at Arbalo and Caecina Severus on the pontes longi; but the plight of the Varian legions, like those of Sabinus and Cotta, was aggravated by treachery and incompetence. The summer camp of Varus might be sought near Minden on the Weser, the site of the disaster in a wide region between Osnabriick and Detmold, in or between the Teutoburger Wald to the south and the Wiehengebirge to the north—the only indication of locality is the vague statement of a writer who had no occasion to be precise. The Germans swept on to capture the Roman posts east of the Rhine; they fell with­out a blow, except Aliso. After a tenacious defence the garrison slipped out and made its way safely to the Rhine. Asprenas, the legate of Varus, had already hastened down with his two legions from Mainz, but the enemy made no attempt to cross.

It had not been a general uprising of the nations of Germany and so no invasion of Gaul was to be feared. Arminius sent the head of Varus to Maroboduus, inciting him to war. Maroboduus wisely declined to serve the ambition of another. At Rome, however, there was consternation. Augustus lamented the loss of his legions—and well he might, for they could not be replaced. Again came the call for recruits—but where were they to be found ? Of raising new legions there was as little prospect as there had been three years before. Forced levies and inferior material were used, and once again freed slaves were enrolled in separate formations. Tiberius had to postpone his Pannonian triumph and betake himself to the Rhine. Five legions had sufficed for the campaigns of Drusus; the garrison was now, however, raised to the total of eight legions, which were henceforth divided into two armies, each under the command of a consular legate. To supply this total the garrison of two legions was withdrawn from Raetia, and four legions were taken from Spain and Illyricum.

The Roman occupation beyond the Rhine had been so incom­plete and superficial that after the loss of the army of Varus nothing was left save some control of the coastal regions, perhaps as far as the mouth of the Elbe—the Frisii remained loyal, perhaps also the Chauci. Augustus’ own statement about his German policy is studiously vague; it may fit the facts—but it may also mask them. If he still laid claim to Germany, the presence of eight legions on the Rhine seemed to show that the claim was to be asserted. It has often been assumed that the disaster of Varus marks the turning point in Rome’s career of conquest, but, even though Tiberius may already have felt what he was before long to express, the renunciation of the conquest of Germany and all that that plan implied was not yet made manifest. After the calamities of the years a.d. 6—9 Rome needed a respite; the great age and the infirmities of Augustus were a warning that the political crisis which his death would provoke could not be far off. So in a.d. 10 and 11 Tiberius and Germanicus did not venture far beyond the Rhine, but contented themselves with raiding and ravaging.

Germanicus was fired by a youthful ambition to emulate the exploits of his father Drusus and make himself worthy of the name which he had inherited; but he had neither the good fortune of his father nor the ability of his uncle. The death of Augustus and the mutiny of the Rhine legions gave him the chance for which he had prayed. The repentant soldiers clamoured to be allowed to expiate their fault in blood, and so Germanicus led them over the Rhine against the unsuspecting Marsi. The Romans fell upon them, butchered many, and succeeded in returning without much danger. Germanicus was not content with this easy victory.

In the course of the following winter he appears to have gained the permission, though perhaps not the enthusiastic approval, of Tiberius for a series of operations on a larger scale: but in their estimate of the purpose which these campaigns were to serve, Tiberius and Germanicus may have differed quite as much as they did two years later about the value of the results achieved. In the spring of a.d. 15 he crossed the Rhine at Mainz. While Caecina Severus from Lower Germany engaged the attention of the Cherusci and defeated the Marsi, Germanicus was to deal with the Chatti. He marched north-eastwards up the Wetterau, rebuilt his father’s fort, crossed the river Adrana (the Eder) and burned Mattium, the capital of the Chatti. He now turned back and was moving towards the Rhine, but on the news that Segestes, the father-in-law and bitter enemy of Arminius, was being beleaguered, he rescued him, and secured a precious hostage, Thusnelda the wife of Arminius. There was still time for another campaign, this time in Lower Germany. Caecina with four legions marched through the lands of the Bructeri, Pedo with the cavalry farther to the north-west, through the Frisii, while Germanicus transported four legions by sea; the three forces met at an agreed point on the river Ems (probably near Rheine). The Bructeri were defeated, and the army marched east or south-east till it came within reach of the Saltus Teutoburgiensis. After visiting the melancholy scene and erecting a tumulus over the unburied bones, Germanicus pursued Arminius eastwards into difficult country. After an indecisive battle he returned to the Ems, where the army broke up again. The cavalry returned in safety; but two of the legions of Germanicus marching along the shore of the Ocean were almost overwhelmed by a high tide, and the army of Caecina was assailed by Arminius as it was crossing the pontes longi. In a vision of the night Caecina saw the ghost of Varus rise from the marshes and beckon him to destruction. It was no idle apprehension—a general with less experience, with less control over himself and over his troops, would have given his name to a second disaster. So after many labours, many risks, and with little to show for it all, the troops returned to their winter quarters.

Germanicus, impressed by the difficulties of transport and provisioning, resolved to make a greater use of the approach by sea. The order went out to build a thousand ships. Before the great expedition was to start, however, he sent a force against the Chatti, and himself, after relieving the fort of Aliso on the Lippe, repaired the road and causeway leading thither. At last all was ermanicus sailed down the canal, through the lakes of Holland, and round to the mouth of the Ems. Here he landed the troops, apparently on the western bank, so that time was wasted in crossing the river. Then suddenly the Roman army appears at the Weser a hundred miles away; beyond are seen the hosts of Arminius. The Romans forced the passage of the river and established themselves on the eastern bank. On the following day was fought a great battle at a place called Idistaviso, probably not far east of Minden. Arminius, holding the hills to the south on the right flank of the Romans, sought to prevent them from marching eastwards towards the Elbe. Though it was claimed that the battle was a defeat for the Germans, Arminius was not dismayed. He now took up a position to the north, on the left flank of the Romans, at the boundary wall of the Angrivarii; the battle which followed does not appear to have been a decisive victory for Germanicus.

The victories of civilized powers over native tribes are commonly due to a superior organization which enables troops to be concentrated rapidly and surely, and at once secures a strategic advantage. Yet Arminius could bring together and could keep together a considerable force of Germans. To have entrapped Varus and his three legions was indeed no mean achievement—but to withstand a Roman army of eight legions and numerous auxilia, to compel it to fight on ground which he had chosen, to arrest its advance, this was military genius.

In comparison Germanicus cuts a poor figure. He set up a trophy with an inscription which asserted that he had conquered the nations between Rhine and Elbe, and then gave the signal for retreat. On the return voyage a great storm arose and scattered the ships. Most of the crews were eventually rescued—but in the eyes of Tiberius that would be no excuse for the risks that had been run. Germanicus—or at least his panegyrist—might affect to believe that the resistance of the Germans had been broken and that another year would complete their subjugation. Tiberius was not to be deceived: he wrote suggesting that Germanicus should now return to celebrate the triumph which he had earned. The arguments of Tiberius were those of good sense itself—honour had been satisfied, risks enough had been taken, diplomacy vyas a more effective weapon than arms in dealing with the Germans. Germanicus had no choice but to obey.

The enterprises of Germanicus had served only to reinforce the caution of Tiberius; it could no longer be doubted that the conquest of Germany must be postponed for a generation if not abandoned for ever.

Until a.d. 6 the Augustan plan of conquest had been carried out with an ease and rapidity that seemed to justify the boldness of its design. The Pannonian Revolt was a grim warning; and might alone have brought about a gradual and peaceful retirement from Germany. After the disaster of Varus and the illusory victories of Germanicus there was no choice. The task was seen to be more difficult in every way than had been imagined; it would take many years yet to penetrate the land and subdue its inhabitants. The Germans had at first been intimidated by the rapid movements of the Romans and circumvented by their strategy. But now came a change—it was much more than a Roman army that perished with Varus. The spell of Roman prestige was shattered. The Germans under a leader of great military talent had been emboldened to face the legions in open battle. A succession of Roman blows such as those struck by Germanicus, so far from breaking down their resistance, might only weld them more firmly together. A German nation, a German national resistance did not exist—the impact of the foreigner might create it. To keep the Germans disunited and harmless an occasional intervention of Roman diplomacy would be more than sufficient.

Moreover, however strong might have been the arguments in favour of conquest, the risks and the cost were enough to deter the prudent parsimony of Tiberius. The earlier campaigns in the north had been swift and bloodless: but in the Pannonian Revolt many legionaries had fallen in battle, and the Empire could not afford another disaster like that of Varus. To achieve the conquest of Germany and to make it permanent, more legions would be required. But they could not be found—the crisis of the years a.d. 6—9 revealed a deplorable weakness; and an intelligent con­temporary had drawn a melancholy comparison with the reserves of men that Rome had been able to command in an earlier age. The three legions of Varus were not replaced; even the normal demands of legionary recruiting in the reign of Tiberius were far from easy to satisfy, as reputable evidence attests. But if the person and the privileges of the Roman citizen had to be spared, were there not native levies in abundance whose employment would serve a double purpose? It is true that without the help of this excellent fighting material the wars and conquests of Augustus could not have been planned and achieved, the frontiers could not have been protected later. But there was a limit to their use, as the Pannonian Revolt had shown.

Therefore, despite the disproportion in population and resources between the Roman Empire and the free Germans, the conquest was postponed, if not renounced. Had it been as desirable or necessary to Rome as the possession of Germany between Rhine and Elbe was to Charlemagne, it would no doubt have been achieved, and by the use of similar methods, whatever the cost. But it was not necessary. Possessing Illyricum, the Empire could dispense with Germany; however desirable may have been the control of the route from the Elbe to the Danube, there were certain disadvantages, especially in the annexation of so much rough and forested country close behind the intended frontier. An Empire which embraced the fairest regions of the globe could cheerfully forgo an extension without purpose or profit; and Rome had acquired so much territory in Europe that a pause was imperative. Moreover should the time ever come for a renewal of aggression, it might not take the form of a resumption of the adventures of Germanicus in Northern Germany. Here the broad stream of the Rhine could be a barrier as well as a boundary: but in South Germany the need for a more rapid route between Mainz and the Danube lands might suggest an advance like that made by the Flavian emperors, or even further, to a natural frontier in the Thtiringer Wald. Nor was the Danube to be neglected. In the decade before a.d. 6 the Romans had not only secured the line of the Danube, but had extended their influence, if not their control, far beyond it: Dacia had been humbled, Bohemia was to be annexed. The plan failed: and it is to be regretted that Trajan’s conquest of Dacia was never completed by that of Bohemia, so as to carry forward the frontier to the Carpathians and enclose the whole of the Danube basin. Such an advance at some time in the future may once have been contemplated by the advisers of Augustus—but his political testament forbade all expansion; and it was not likely that his successor would neglect it.

Though failure and disaster had arrested the progress of Roman conquest, what had been achieved was none the less great. Province had been bound to province, army to army. In this system Illyricum was the indispensable link; and when civil war comes again, the decision is not fought out in Thessaly, Epirus or Macedonia, but farther to the north, on the great highway between West and East; the mastery of the sea loses its importance, no legions pass along the Egnatian Way; the sieges of Byzantium and Aquileia stand large in the pages of history, Cibalae and Mursa give their names to momentous battles.

The value of Illyricum is not at first manifest, for very little happens on the Danube for some time. The Rhine after Varus, like the Parthian Question after Crassus, is accorded in annals ancient and modern a prominence that exceeds its deserts. By the end of the first century, however, the Danube provinces begin to come into their own. In Hadrian’s time they have ten legions, the Rhine has only four. It is to Pannonia that Hadrian sends his adopted son Aelius Caesar, and it is Pannonia that raises Septimius Severus to the purple. In the third century Illyricum, its soldiers and its emperors, are the salvation of the Empire.

It had once been the belief of Augustus and his advisers that fifteen legions would be enough to achieve great conquests, and hold in subjection not only Gaul and the Danube provinces but Germany and Bohemia as well. It was now evident that the same number of legions would be needed to protect the frontiers of Rhine and Danube—or rather to hold down wide regions within those frontiers, Gaul, Bosnia and the Balkans. Beyond the great rivers, the barbarians had been isolated and intimidated. They might be left to their own quarrels—here the open secret of Roman policy was to divide but not to conquer.

It was not long before the policy of Tiberius was triumphantly vindicated. German turned against German, and within a few years Arminius was dead, Maroboduus an inglorious exile.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ECONOMIC UNIFICATION OF THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION: INDUSTRY, TRADE, AND COMMERCE