CRISTO RAUL.ORG

READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

OCTAVIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS :

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FOUNDER OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

CHAPTER X

THE IMPERIAL AND MILITARY POLICY OF AUGUSTUS

At the end of his life Augustus left, among other memoirs, a roll containing certain maxims of state which he thought important for his successors to observe. Among them was an injunction not to seek to increase the Empire, for it would be difficult to guard an extended frontier. His own policy had been directed generally on this principle. Such additions as were made in his time were mainly those rendered inevitable by the necessity of securing the already existing frontiers. When his generals went beyond that they met with difficulties and sometimes with disaster. The additions actually made were (1) in Africa; Egypt was made a province in BC30, at first almost as a private possession of the Emperor, though in BC10 it was, nominally at any rate, put on the same footing as the other provinces. Mauretania, on the other hand, though made a province in BC33 was restored to independence under King Iuba in BC25. (2) In Asia a new province of Galatia was formed in BC25, with a capital at Ancyra, and embracing several districts, such as Lycaonia, Isauria, Pamphylia, and parts of Phrygia. (3) In the West, sometime before A.D. 6, Moesia, answering to the modern Servia and Bulgaria, was made a province as a barrier of the Empire on the Danube. So also Illyricum, in BC 9-8, was extended to the Danube by the addition of Pannonia; Noricum, also on the Danube, was held in subjection, if not fully organised as a province, after BC16; and Rhsetia (modern Bavaria) was put under a Roman procurator after BC15. All these additions were clearly rendered necessary in order to protect the line of the Danube as the frontier of the Empire. Lastly, on the reorganisation of Gaul in four provinces (BC 16—14), two districts along the left bank of the Lower Rhine, called Germania Superior and Germania Inferior, were also occupied and partly organised, while some minor Alpine districts, Alpes Maritimae (Savoy and Nice), Alpes Cottise (Susa and district), Alpes Penninas (Canton du Valois) were taken over and administered sometimes independently and sometimes as part of other provinces, In these cases again the extension was merely consequential, the inevitable result of having a long frontier to defend against invading tribes. The Rhine and the Danube then became the limits of the Empire. We shall have occasion to see immediately what dangers awaited an attempt to go beyond them.

Augustus twice spent periods of between two and three years in the East, engaged in resettling frontiers and re-organising the Roman provinces.

After the victory at Actium (BC31) he remained in the East till BC29. The changes then made chiefly consisted in upsetting most of the arrangements which had been made by Antony with various client kings, and in favour of the children of Cleopatra. Thus Cyprus, which had been restored to Cleopatra, was now separated from Egypt and made a province; the coast towns of Syria and Palestine were reunited to the province of Syria; certain cities of Crete and Cyrene, Iudaea and Ituraea, and of Cilicia, which Antony had assigned to Cleopatra's son, Caesarion, were either reunited to the provinces or declared free, as was also the case with other districts and towns assigned by Antony to his own son by Cleopatra. Certain client kings, however, were allowed to retain their territory and dignity, such as Herod in Iudaea, Amyntas in Galatia, Archelaus in Cappadocia. But the eternal question in the East was that of the Parthians. They not only were resolved to maintain the Euphrates as the limit beyond which Roman power was not to pass, but they had frequently made raids upon Syria, and were always attempting to occupy Armenia, which was a Roman protectorate, and the intervening kingdom of Media. The disaster of Crassus in Mesopotamia, and the chequered operations of Antony, had all sprung from these facts. When Augustus arrived in Asia the state of things which had finally resulted from the operations of Antony was that Artaxes (whose father, Artavasdes, had been treacherously captured by Antony and afterwards put to death by Cleopatra) was king of Armenia, and had attacked Media and captured its king Artavasdes; and that Phraates had recovered his kingdom of Parthia. Augustus had two or three advantages in dealing with these complications. He found the brothers of the Armenian Artaxes still prisoners at Alexandria, and sent them to Rome as hostages. Again the captured king of Media managed to escape and appealed to him for help; and, lastly, Phraates of Parthia had only just recovered his throne, from which he had been expelled by a rebellion headed by Tiridates, and the latter escaped to Syria and sent to implore the help of Augustus, while legates from Phraates also arrived soliciting his support. Augustus availed himself skilfully of these complications to assume the position of a lord paramount and arbiter. He allowed Tiridates to remain in safety in Syria; but he treated the legates of Phraates in a friendly manner, and cordially invited a son of that king to accompany him to Rome, where, however, he was kept as n hostage. Artavasdes was set up in Lesser Armenia to form a check upon Artaxes. These diplomatic successes were regarded in Rome, as we have seen, as veritable triumphs over the dangerous Parthians—the only name much known there. The abolition of the arrangements of Antony, which had involved the curtailment of the Roman Empire, was recorded on coins struck in BC 29, with a head of Augustus on the obverse, and on the reverse a figure of victory standing on the mystic cista, with the legend Asia recepta. But it is with his second Eastern progress (BC 22-19) that the useful public works, such as roads and buildings, of which traces are still found, probably began.

Between these two visits there had been only two movements of serious importance—the useless and almost disastrous expedition of Aelius Gallus into Arabia (BC 24-3), and the invasion of Southern Egypt at Elephantine by Candace, queen of Ethiopia, encouraged by the diminution of the Roman forces in Egypt during the Arabian expedition. The Ethiopians gained some minor successes over three Roman cohorts stationed near the frontier, but were eventually repulsed by the prefect Gaius Petronius, who pursued them to their capital town Nabata, which he took and plundered.

The second eastward progress of Augustus began with some months’ residence in Sicily. There he was busied in founding colonies, of which seven are named. The chief town of Sicily was still Syracuse, but it seems to have suffered in the time of Sextus Pompeius, and Augustus placed in it two thousand settlers, probably veterans. It was the object of such colonies to provide for veterans and poor Italians, but also to Romanise countries more completely, and to introduce an industrial class. Sicily needed above all things free cultivators. Its corn trade had suffered from the competition of Africa, Sardinia, and Egypt, and its pastoral farms were largely owned by Roman capitalists, who did not reside, but employed slave-labour directed by bailiffs or villici. One object at least, therefore, of these measures of Augustus was to bring into the country a class of small landowners residing on their property. Land was found for them by purchase, where there was no ager publicus available.

From Sicily Augustus passed to Greece and wintered at Samos. Achaia was a senatorial province, but the Emperor, we may notice, exercised complete authority there. He had already established two colonies—at Actium and Patrae, and he seems to have devoted most of his attention to promoting their interests. He compelled the in habitants of several townships in the neighbourhood of both towns to migrate to the new colonies, and he insisted on the colony at Actium being admitted to the Amphictyonic League. The places were well chosen for naval purposes, but the element of compulsion in his policy towards them was unfortunate. He does not appear to have done much for Greece generally. It was in a lamentably decaying state, the population declining, and old towns disappearing. Nearly the only exception was the Iulian colony at Corinth. Such changes as Augustus made on this visit rather tended to emphasise this state of things, and certainly did nothing to relieve it. Athens, which retained nothing of its greatness except its past and the still surviving reputation as a university town (though Marseilles was running it hard even in that), had disgraced itself in his eyes by the display of sympathy, first for the Pompeians against Iulius, again for Brutus and Cassius against the triumvirs, and lastly for Antony against himself. A town always on the losing side can expect little favour. It was deprived of its few remaining extra-Attic dependencies, Aegina and Eretria, and was forbidden to avail itself of almost the only source of revenue left—the fees which certain persons were still willing to pay for the honour of being enrolled as its citizens. Sparta, indeed, was rewarded by the restoration of Cythera, in return, it is said, for hospitality to Livia when in exile with her former husband; but, on the other hand, it was deprived of the control over its harbour town of Gythium. But though both Iulius and Augustus favoured Sparta, as against Athens—a feet commemorated by a temple to Iulius and an altar to Augustus—it remained completely insignificant.

Very different was his policy in Asia. There Augustus set himself to restore the prosperity of the towns by grants of money, by relief from or readjustment of tribute, and by the promotion of useful public works. Nor were details of local administration and internal reforms neglected. Edicts are preserved which touch on such matters as the age of local magistrates, or the succession to the property of intestates in Bithynia showing with what minute care he studied local interests and problems. It was now probably that schemes were set on foot for opening up the country by roads, afterwards carried out by his legates. Milestones are being now discovered along the via Sebaste connecting the six Pisidian colonies dated in the eighteenth year of his tribunician power (BC6), and a marble temple to Augustus still stands at Ancyra (Angora) the gratitude of these Asiatic cities. At the same time disorder or illegal conduct was sternly punished. Cyzicus was deprived of its libertas for having flogged and put to death some Roman citizens, and the same punishment was awarded for their internal disorders to Tyre and Sidon, whose ancient liberties had been secured to them by Antony when he handed over the country to Cleopatra.

But of all his achievements during this progress nothing made such a sensation in the Roman world, or was so much celebrated by the poets of the day, as the fact that standards by the he received back from the Parthian king the Roman eagles and standards lost by Crassus in BC53, by Antony’s legate Decidius Saxa in BC40, and by Antony himself in BC36 in a battle with Parthians and Medes. Those taken by the Medes had been returned to him, but not those taken by the Parthians. In BC23 Trridates, who had been allowed to take refuge in Syria in BC30, came to Rome, and Phraates, to counteract his appeal, sent ambassadors thither also. After consulting the Senate Augustus declined to give up Tiridates, but he sent back to Phraates the son whom he had kept at Rome for the last six years on condition that the king should restore the standards. Pressed though he was by the disaffection of his subjects, Phraates had not yet fulfilled his bargain. But perhaps this disaffection had by BC20 become more acute, or he was alarmed by the promptness with which Augustus asserted Roman supremacy in Armenia. Artaxes had ruled ill and had been insubordinate. Augustus appears to have meditated an expedition against him, but his subjects anticipated the difficulty by assassinating him. Augustus says that he might have made Armenia a province, but preferred to allow the ancient kingdom to remain. Accordingly on his order Tiberius went to Armenia and with his own hand placed the diadem on the head of Tigranes, brother of the late king, who had been living in exile at Rome. Thus the supremacy of Augustus was acknowledged in Armenia and its king ruled by his permission. A coin struck in BC 19 represents it as a real capture of Armenia, having on its reverse Caesar Div. F. Armen, capt. Imp. viiii. The Parthian king thought it well now to fulfil his bargain, and again Tiberius was commissioned to receive the captured standards in Syria. With the standards were also some prisoners; though there were others who had in the thirty-three years that had elapsed since the fall of Crassus settled peaceably in Parthian territory, married wives, and now refused to return. Such a contented abandonment of their native land seemed shocking to the orthodox Roman, unable to suppose life worth living among barbarians for one who had once been a citizen of the Eternal City. Prisoners of war were never much valued at Rome. It was the traditional maxim that the state never paid ransom, though private friends might and did, and Horace’s ode may be meant to support the Emperor’s refusal of some demand of Phraates for ransom of prisoners to accompany the standards. This transaction, however, was the crown of the Emperor’s work in the East. It is commemorated on coins of BC19 bearing a triumphal arch, with Augustus receiving the standards, on the obverse, and the legend civibus et signis militaribus a Parthis receptis on the reverse. The poets were not behind with their compliments. Vergil, who was in Greece in this the last year of his life, seems to have inserted three lines in his description of opening the doors of Bellona to bring in an allusion to it. Horace, who had for the time given up lyric poetry, yet contrives a compliment in one of his epistles; and, on returning to lyric poetry in BC 13-12, is careful to include it among the great services of Augustus; and Propertius, after prophetic suggestions as to what will be done, at last burst out into a triumphant hymn of praise over the achievements of these years, and, above all, on the Nemesis that has come for the slaughtered Crassus. Many years afterwards Ovid takes the opportunity in describing the temple of Mars Ultor, in which Augustus deposited the recovered standards, to glorify him for having wiped out an old and shameful stain upon the Roman arms.

There were many other arrangements made with the client kings of Asia, all of which were accompanied by the strict condition that they were henceforth to confine themselves to the territories now assigned to them and were to make no wars of aggression. The pax augusta was to be strictly maintained everywhere.

All this had been done without any drop of blood shed in war, and Augustus was able to devote the winter of BC 20-19 at Samos to rest and enjoyment, receiving numerous embassies from all parts, as far as from India. The Indian envoys brought him a present of tigers, a beast never before seen in Greece or Italy, and a wonderful armless dwarf who could draw a bow and throw javelins with his feet. He returned next year by way of Athens, where he was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries and where he met with Vergil. The poet joined the Emperor’s train, visited Megara with him, and returned with him to Italy, only to fall ill at Brindisi and die (September 22).

Though Augustus returned to Rome amidst loud congratulations, the Western part of the Empire was not yet at peace, and in fact there were many threatening signs of future trouble. Agrippa, indeed, in the very year of the Emperor’s return  from the East, crushed the rebellious Cantabri and Astures, not without severe fighting; but though Augustus was able now to remain at home, passing laws, holding the secular games, and strengthening his family by adopting Agrippa’s children, the Empire was not at peace, the Ianus Quirinus still stood open. There were, in fact, a number of “little wars,” mostly frontier raids. Thus in BC 17—16, P. Silius Nerva was engaged with various Alpine tribes, and in repelling an inroad of Pannonians. There were also about the same time brief outbursts in Spain and Dalmatia, and inroads of barbarous tribes (Dentheletae and Scordisci) into Macedonia. In Thrace the guardian of the sons of Cotys had to be assisted against the Bessi, and the Sauromatae had to be driven back across the Danube. These were comparatively unimportant affairs. But a more serious danger was caused by some warlike German tribes—Sugambri, Usipetes, and Tencteri—crossing the Rhine and invading Gallia Belgica. They defeated some Roman cavalry, and while pursuing them came up with Lollius and his main army, which they again defeated, capturing the eagle of the Fifth Legion. Suetonius says that the affair was rather disgraceful than really disastrous. But it seemed sufficiently serious to Augustus. Agrippa was away in the East looking after Syria and Asia, and did not return till BC13; and he resolved to go to Gaul himself, taking with him Tiberius, and leaving Drusus to carry on the latter’s praetorship. The Germans, however, had no wish to fight a regular imperial army, they therefore retired beyond the Rhine, and made terms and gave hostages.

Augustus nevertheless found enough to do without positive fighting in introducing improvements and reforms. At Nemausus the old gate of the town walls still stands, inscribed with his name, and dated in the  seventh year of his tribunician power (BC16); he had, moreover, to listen to long tales of grievances caused by the extortions of Licinius, the procurator at Lugdunum. This man’s career was an early example of that of the rich freedmen of later times. Brought as prisoner from Gaul by Iulius Caesar, and apparently emancipated by Octavian in accordance with his uncle’s will, he had by some means amassed an immense fortune, and retained the favour of Augustus by large contributions to the public works from time to time promoted by the Emperor. A millionaire disposed to such liberality is always welcome to a sovereign with a taste for expensive reforms. As a Gaul by birth, Augustus seems to have supposed that he would be a sympathetic officer. But he proved more Roman than the Romans in exacting the last farthing. We are reminded of “Morton’s fork” and of Empson and Dudley, when we are told that he insisted on certain monthly payments being made fourteen times in the year, on the ground that November and December meaning the ninth and tenth months, there must be two more to be accounted for! The complaints were so serious, however, that Licinius thought it necessary to offer to surrender his whole property to Augustus, as though he had only amassed it for the public service, with the deliberate purpose of weakening the disloyal natives. We are not told whether he was left in power, but at any rate he escaped punishment and survived Augustus. He probably was recalled to Rome, where he tried to pacify public indignation by large contributions to the restoration of the Curia Iulia, which was rededicated in honour of the Emperor’s grandsons about A.D. 12.

But another and more serious trouble had now to be faced. The Rhaeti, inhabiting the modern Grisons, Tyrol, and parts of Lombardy, were making raids upon Gaul and Italy, burning and slaying and plundering. With them were allied the Vindelici (inhabiting parts of modern Baden, Wurtenburg, and S. Bavaria), with other Alpine tribes. The campaign against these tribes was intrusted to Tiberius, who conceived a masterly plan which was crowned with brilliant success. Drusus was summoned from Rome to guard the passes into Lombardy, and in the valleys of the Tridentine Alps at the entrance of the Brenner pass, near the Lacus Benacus (Lago di Garda), he won a brilliant victory over them, and forced many of their mountain strongholds. Shut off thus from Italy they turned their armies towards Helvetic Gaul, but were met by Tiberius and again defeated between Bale and the Lake of Constance. These two defeats seem practically to have annihilated these tribes, and they gave no further trouble. It was after this that Noricum was annexed, and, Rhaetia and Vindelicia conquered, and presently formed into the province Rhaetia.

Still Augustus had to stay on another year in Gaul. Risings had to be suppressed among the Ligurians of the Maritime Alps, and in Pannonia while Agrippa, who had returned from Palestine accompanied or followed by Herod, went to Sinope, on the Pontus, to put down a disturbance that had arisen owing to a disputed claim to the crown of the Cimmerian Bosporus, which an usurper named Scribonius had seized. At the end of BC 14, or the beginning of BC13, Augustus returned to Rome with Tiberius, who entered then upon his first consulship, and there they were also joined by Agrippa. Whether the temple of Ianus was now closed for the third time is not certain. But there are some good reasons for supposing that it was. In two passages, Horace, writing in BC13, speaks of it as though it were a recent occurrence; Dio, in speaking of the return of Augustus, says that he came back after “having settled all the affairs of the Gauls, Germanies and Spains”; there was certainly a lull in the German trouble, where Drusus had been left in command; and lastly an inscription recording the extension of the great road to Gades in Southern Spain, has the date of this year, and records the closing of Ianus in honour of Augustus. None of these are in themselves absolute proofs, but taken together they form a strong presumption. At any rate, Augustus returned to Rome with the feeling that he had secured peace. Though he, as usual, avoided meeting a complimentary procession by entering the city after night fell, yet he came with laurelled fasces. The next morning, after greeting a crowd of people on the Capitol, he caused the laurels to be taken off and solemnly laid on the knees of Jupiter, and the first business he transacted in the Senate was the settlement of the claims of his soldiers. But the peace did not last long, Augustus himself spent the next three years in Italy busied with the census, the lectio senatus, legislation, and various ceremonies. Lepidus died in the early part of this year, and he was at once declared Pontifex Maximus, though the inauguratio did not take place till the following February.

However, before the year was ended, news came of disturbances in Pannonia, and Agrippa—once more associated in the tribunician power—was sent thither. He had no fighting, for the rising was abandoned at his approach. It was his last journey. Next spring he was taken ill in one of his Campanian villas. Augustus threw all business aside and hastened to his house, but arrived too late. Never had ruler a more faithful or abler friend and servant. At every crisis of his life Agrippa had been by his side, and wherever danger was most threatening he had taken the post of difficulty and honour. If he gained wealth in his master’s service, he was always ready to spend it in support of his master’s aims. In the interests of the dynasty he had sunk all private wishes and ambitions. About Agrippa the passion for prurient scandal, characteristic of the age and people, for once is silent, and not a single line or inuendo survives to impeach his private or public life. Augustus showed both his respect and deep feeling. He accompanied the body to Rome, pronounced the funeral oration himself, and deposited the ashes in the new mausoleum which he had erected for his own family.

The news of Agrippa’s death seems to have encouraged the Pannonians once more to strike for freedom. Tiberius accordingly was appointed to succeed him in the command. He laid waste wide portions of their country, inflicted much slaughter upon the inhabitants, and seems quickly to have reduced them to obedience, though only for a time.

Meanwhile Drusus was not idle. The Sugambri and their allies crossed the Rhine into the district called Lower Germany, a part of Belgium (now North Brabant), where they would find tribes nearly allied to themselves, and willing to shake off the Roman yoke. Drusus had been engaged in the consecration of an altar to Augustus at Lugdunum, where he had invited the attendance of leading Gauls from all these provinces. He hurried back to the Rhine and drove the invaders over the river, and then throwing a bridge across it (somewhere below Cologne), he attacked the Usipites on the right bank of the Lupia, and then marched up the Rhine to attack the Sugambri. But there was a fleet of ships supporting him in the Rhine. He cut a canal from the River to Lake Flevo (Zuyder Zee), so that this fleet might sail up the coast to the mouths of the three rivers—the Amisia, Visurgis, and Albis (Ems, Weser, Elbe). He proposed to make the Elbe the limit of the Roman Empire, instead of the Rhine; but in this first year only reduced the coast as far as the Visurgis. The next year (BC11), he advanced by land to the same river, only farther inland, and Occupied the country of the Cherusci (Westphalia), and though on their way home his men were nearly caught in an ambush, they got back safely to the banks of the Lupia, and several forts were established in various parts of the country. The next year (BC10) he was engaged with the Chatti (Hessen), who endeavoured to regain the territories from which he had driven them in the previous year. In BC9, being now consul, he pushed as far as the Elbe, where he erected a trophy to mark the extreme limit of the Roman advance, through the land of the Chatti and Trevi. But on his return march he fell and broke his leg, and there being no skilled physician with the army, he died after thirty days’ suffering. Besides these marches into Germany, he had, during his command, established a line of fortresses on the Lower Rhine, to the number of fifty, as far up the stream as Argentoratum (Strassburg).

On hearing of his brother’s accident, Tiberius, who was at Ticinum, hurried to his side, was with him when he died, and accompanied the corpse on foot back to Rome, where he delivered a funeral oration, and Augustus, who returned from Lugdunum at this time, another. The ashes were placed in the Mausoleum of Augustus. Tiberius was appointed to succeed him on the Rhine, and in BC 8 crossed the river to attack the Sugambri. But as the other tribes made their submission, the Sugambri were induced to send some of their leading men to negotiate also. Augustus then took a step which requires, at any rate, some explanation. He seized these legates and kept them in confinement in various towns as hostages. It had the immediate effect, however, of keeping the Sugambri quiet, large numbers of them were settled on the left bank of the Rhine, and Tiberius was able to come home for his triumph in BC7, with which the name of Drusus was also associated.

No wars of any consequence disturbed the peace of the Empire for nearly nine years. Tiberius retired to Rhodes in BC6, and his successors in the command of the army of the Rhine had the task of maintaining and strengthening the conquests of Drusus. The two districts on the left bank of the river, Germania Inferior and Superior, though for some purposes they belonged to Gallia Belgica, yet as military districts were distinct, and they included some fortresses on the right bank of the Rhine. The country between the Rhine and the Elbe was in an ambiguous position. It was not a province, and yet the commanders on the Rhine occupied as much of it as they could from, time to time maintain.

But in A.D. 4 Tiberius, now returned from Rhodes and adopted son of Augustus, took over the command on the Rhine, and immediately began a great forward movement like that of his brother Drusus. He too advanced to the Weser and reduced the Cherusci who were in revolt; and after marching to the Lippe again, advanced to the Elbe (A.D. 5), reducing the Chauci and Longobardi, this time with the support of a fleet that entered the mouth of the Elbe. Some others thought it safer to send envoys and make terms of friendship with Rome. Next year (A.D. 6) he was to attack the Marcomanni under a powerful leader named Marobudus. The attack was to be made from two sides. C. Sextius Saturninus, an able and experienced officer, was to lead one army from the Rhine, through the territory of the Chatti (near Cologne), while Tiberius himself led another from Noricum across the Danube. The two were to converge upon the district now occupied by the Marcomanni answering to the modern Bohemia. Tiberius was accompanied by the governor of Pannonia (Valerius Messalinus), and a large part of the troops stationed there. But the expedition was prevented by a sudden rising in Pannonia and Dalmatia. The inhabitants of these countries had not become reconciled to Roman rule; they felt the burden of the tribute, and the opportunity afforded by the withdrawal of so many troops was eagerly seized. Tiberius was forced to offer terms to Marobudus, which he accepted, and hurry back to Pannonia, while Saturninus returned to the Rhine for fear of an outbreak there. The rising in Pannonia and Dalmatia was with difficulty suppressed after a weary struggle lasting between three and four years. Many legions had to be drafted into the country from other provinces as well as large auxiliary forces. Germanicus was summoned to assist with a new army, and Augustus himself came to Ariminum to be near at hand. Suetonius affirms that it was the most serious struggle in which the Romans had been engaged since the Punic wars. In BC9 Tiberius indeed returned to Rome to claim his triumph, but had to go back to put a last touch to the war.

Meanwhile the army of the Rhine had been under the command of P. Quintilius Varus. Velleius gives an unfavourable account of him. He was more a courtier than a soldier, and in his government of Syria had shown himself greedy of money. “He entered a rich province a poor man, and left a poor province a rich one.” From the time of his accession to the command in BC7 he seems to have regarded the country between the Rhine and Elbe as completely reduced to the form of a Roman province, and proceeded to levy tribute with the same strictness as he had been used to do in Syria. But the German tribes did not regard themselves as Roman subjects. The Romans were only masters of so much as their camps could control. While Varus was living in fancied security in his summer camp on the Weser, busied only with the usual legal administration of a provincial governor, four great German peoples, the Cherusci, Chatti, Marsi, and Bructeri, were secretly combining under the lead of the Cheruscan chief, Arminius, to strike a blow for liberty. As the autumn of A.D. 9 approached Varus prepared to return to the regular winter quarters on the Rhine (Castra Vetera). Arminius, who had served in the Roman army, and had been rewarded by the citizenship and the rank of eques, had ingratiated himself with Varus, and was fully-acquainted with his plans, and though Varus had been warned of his treachery he seems to have taken no heed. In order to bring him through the difficult country where the ambush was to await him, a rising of a tribe off his direct road to the Lower Rhine was planned. He fell into the trap, and turning aside to chastise the rebellious tribe, was caught in a difficult pass, somewhere between the sources of the Lippe and Ems, and he and nearly the whole of his army perished. For three days the army struggled through a thick and almost pathless forest, encumbered by a heavy baggage train, and a number of women and children, attacked and slaughtered at nearly every step by the Germans who were concealed in the woods, and continually made descents upon them. A miserable remnant was saved by the exertions of L. Asprenas, a legate of Varus, who had come to the rescue. Varus and some of his chief officers appear to have committed suicide. The loss of three legions and a large body of auxiliaries greatly affected the Emperor, now a man of over seventy. For many months he wore signs of mourning, and we are told that at times in his restless anxiety he beat his head upon the door, crying, “Varus, give me back my legions!”. Perhaps this is the picturesque imagination of anecdote mongers. Though alarmed for the possible consequences both at home and in the provinces, he acted with spirit and energy. He ordered the urban pickets to be carefully posted, suspended all changes in provincial governments, and held a levy of citizen soldiers, enforcing by threats and punishment the duty of giving in the names. For some time past service in the army had been regarded as a profession sufficiently attractive to draw volunteers, without having recourse to the legal right of conscription. But a sudden emergency like this seems to have found men apathetic or disinclined, and he had to resort to the old methods. He thought it necessary also to get rid for a time of Gauls or Germans who were serving in the city cohorts or residing in Rome. Tiberius, on the news of the disaster, hurried from his Pannonian quarters to Rome, and was appointed to the Rhine command, to which he went early in A.D. 10. The danger most to be feared was that the victorious Germans would at once cross the Rhine. But this had been averted partly because the Marcomanni had declined to join the insurrection, even when Arminius sent the head of Varus to their chief, Marobudus, and partly by the fact that the rebellious Germans themselves wasted time in blockading Aliso, the fort erected by Drusus on the Lippe, which was obstinately defended by its garrison under Lucius Caedicius. It proved to be the Ladysmith of the German war, for the Germans, fearing to leave it on their rear, missed the opportunity of attacking the camps on the Rhine before they could be reinforced. The brave garrison, when their provisions were exhausted, escaped on a dark night and reached Castra Vetera in safety. Still, the result of the rising was to free Germany beyond the Rhine. When Tiberius arrived to take the command in A.D. 10, he spent the first year in strengthening the forts along that river; and though in A.D. 11 he moved his summer camp beyond it, he never went far, or apparently engaged in any warlike operations then or in A.D. 12. In the next year he returned to Rome and was succeeded in the command by his nephew, Germanicus. The forward movements of this young prince belong to the next reign, but Tiberius no doubt learnt now what a few years later induced him to recall Germanicus and be content with the frontier of the Rhine.

The life of Augustus was now near its close, and there are no more military enterprises to record. He had never commanded in the field since the Cantabrian war of BC25; but he had taken part in the most important wars by moving to within such a distance of the seat of war as to hear news quickly and to superintend the despatch of provisions and reinforcements. He was probably more usefully employed in this way, and was enabled to see, by personal observation, the needs of the provinces and the best methods of remedying abuses and promoting prosperity. In the course of his reign he is said to have visited every province except Sardinia and Africa, and hardly any is without some trace of his activity and liberality in the way of roads, bridges or public buildings. He was anxious that all, however distant, should feel in touch with the central authority at Rome. Among other means to promote this was the establishment or improvement of an imperial post which should reach the most distant dependencies.

We must not think of this as being like the modern postal service—meant for the general use of the public. It was purely official. Just as the main purpose of the great roads was to facilitate the rapid movement of armies and officials, so the post was a contrivance to expedite official despatches, to convey the Emperor’s orders to remotest parts of the Empire, and to carry back news and warnings to the government at home. Along the great roads in Italy and the provinces there had long been posting houses where relays of horses, mules, or carriages could be obtained, but there was never what we should call a postal service for the transmission of private letters. Rich men kept slaves for this purpose (tabellarii), the magistrates had official messengers (statores), and the companies of publicani had their regular service of carriers. Private people could, as a favour, get their letters occasionally conveyed by some of these; and it was considered a proper act of politeness at Rome when despatching a slave with letters to distant places, to send round to one’s friends to know whether they wished to send any by him. Again, governors of provinces under the republic had arranged with certain scribes in Rome to copy out the diurna acta and transmit them by slaves or paid messengers. But for official purposes Augustus arranged a number of stations along the great roads with men, horses, and carriages, to convey to and from Rome all the news that it was needful for the government to know or all orders that emanated from the Emperor. Private persons would have no right to use these public servants or conveyances; but no doubt the organisation for the public service facilitated the transmission of private correspondence also.

This actual and material tightening of the bond which united distant parts of the Empire with the central government went side by side with the moral effect of the change in the position of the governors. No longer permitted to make what profit they could from excessive exactions, or percentage allowed by usage though not by law, they all received a fixed salary, as did the lesser officials; and though extortion was still occasionally heard of, the provinces knew that they had a rapid means of appealing to the Emperor and a fair certainty of redress.

Another change that made at first for unity, though it afterwards had the contrary effect, concerned the army. In the time of the republic there was in theory no one standing army. There were many armies, all of which took the military oath to their respective commanders. Now the military oath was taken by all to one man—the Emperor. The commanders of legions were his legati. He regulated the pay, the years of service, the retiring allowance for all alike. Each of the republican imperators had a praetorian guard, generally consisting of auxiliary troops. Now there was one praetorian guard, naturally stationed at Rome, and though distinguished from the rest by increased pay and easier years of service, it, as well as the cohortes vigilum, was under the same command. This applies also to the fleet which was organised under Augustus chiefly to protect the coast and clear the sea of pirates: the two principal stations being at Misenum on the west, and Ravenna on the east coast, with a third maintained for a time at Forum Iulii (Fréjus). The men serving in these ships occupied the same position as citizen soldiers or auxiliaries, and like them took the oath to one man—the Emperor. But the very completeness of the organisation, it is right to notice here, eventually made for disruption! Certain legions became constantly attached to certain province, the auxiliaries serving with them being as a rule recruited from the same provinces. The several branches of the army thus came to feel an esprit de corps, and to regard themselves as a separate entity with separate interests and claims. Consequently, when in after-times the central authority was in dispute or in process of change, the legions in the different provinces spoke and thought of themselves as separate “armies,” capable of taking an independent line and having a determining voice in deciding who should be their Imperator. In those troublous times the provinces which had no military establishment, or only a weak one, ceased to count for much, and had to follow the strongest army near them. For the present such difficulties were not foreseen. Augustus was a strict disciplinarian, and little was heard as yet of any serious insubordination. When it did occur it was promptly punished. He disbanded the 10th legion for misconduct, and exercised at times the full vigour of military punishment for desertion of posts or lesser offences, and was careful in addressing his troops not to lower his dignity by affectation of equality. He called them “Soldiers!” not “Fellow-soldiers!”. At the same time he kept up the traditional exclusiveness of the legions, and seldom employed freedmen, except as a kind of special constable in the city, and twice in times of great distress, the Illyrian and German wars: even then they were formed in separate cohorts, and armed in some way less complete than the legionaries.

The same conservative attachment to the ancient superiority of Rome made him chary of granting the citizenship either to individuals, or to masses of soldiers, or to states. This was one of the points in which his policy was opposite to that of Iulius. The latter by his large grants of citizenship to soldiers, professional men and communities, had helped to raise the number of citizens from about 450,000 in BC70 to 4,063,000 (the number in the Census of BC 28). During the forty-five years that remained to Augustus the number had only gone up to 4,937,000 (the Census of A.D. 13). This is probably little more than can be accounted for by the growth of population; so that extensions of the franchise must have been insignificant. His idea was an empire, one in its military obligations and in its subjection to one supreme head, and yet not divorced from the original city state. Rome was to be the imperial city, the seat of government; the Populus Romanus was to be the inhabitants of Rome extended to the limits of Italy. There was to be a sharp line of division between the ruling and the ruled. It was one of those compromises that are without the elements of permanence. And yet it established a sentiment that has lasted, and is a reason that even to this day the centre of spiritual life to a large part of Europe is on the banks of the Tiber. In material matters the extension of the citizenship meant the gradual shifting of the centre of power, and when early in the third century Caracalla,

for purposes or taxation, extended the citizenship to the whole Empire, though the Roman name and its historical prestige remained, Rome itself became only one of a number of cities in a widely spread empire, and politically by no means the most important. Such a conception was far from the mind of Augustus. It would have seemed to him to be more worthy of his rival Antony, who was for setting up a new Rome in Alexandria.

CHAPTER XI

AUGUSTUS AND HIS WORSHIPPERS