CHAPTER XIII.

THE AFRICAN PROVINCES.

[Sidenote: North Africa and the Berber stock.]

North Africa, in a physical and ethnographic point of view, stands by

itself like an island. Nature has isolated it on all sides, partly by

the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, partly by the widely-extended

shore, incapable of cultivation, of the Great Syrtis below the modern

Fezzan, and, in connection therewith, by the desert, likewise closed

against cultivation, which shuts off the steppe-land and the oases of

the Sahara to the south. Ethnographically the population of this wide

region forms a great family of peoples, distinguished most sharply

from the Blacks of the south, but likewise strictly separated from the

Egyptians, although perhaps with these there may once have subsisted

a primeval fellowship. They call themselves in the Riff near Tangier

Amâzigh, in the Sahara Imôshagh, and the same name meets us, referred

to particular tribes, on several occasions among the Greeks and Romans,

thus as Maxyes at the founding of Carthage (ii. 8) {ii. 7.}, as Mazices

in the Roman period at different places of the Mauretanian north

coast; the similar designation that has remained with the scattered

remnants proves that this great people has once had a consciousness,

and has permanently retained the impression, of the relationship of

its members. To the peoples who came into contact with them this

relationship was far from clear; the diversities which prevail among

their several parts are not merely at the present day glaring, after in

the past thousands of years the mixture with the neighbouring peoples,

particularly the Negroes in the south and the Arabs in the north,

has had its effect upon them, but certainly were as considerable even

before these foreign influences as their extension in space demands.

A universally valid expression for the nation as such is wanting in

all other idioms; even where the name goes beyond the designation of

stock,[275] it yet does not describe the circle as a whole. That of

Libyans, which the Egyptians, and after their precedent the Greeks use,

belongs originally to the most easterly tribes coming into contact

with Egypt, and has always remained specially pertaining to those of

the eastern half. That of Nomades, of Greek origin, expresses in the

first instance only the absence of settlement, and then in its Roman

transformation as Numidians, has become associated with that territory

which king Massinissa united under his sway. That of Mauri, of native

origin, and current among the later Greeks as well as the Romans, is

restricted to the western parts of the land, and continues in use for

the kingdoms here formed and the Roman provinces that have proceeded

from them. The tribes of the south are comprehended under the name of

the Gaetulians, which, however, the stricter use of language limits to

the region on the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Mauretania. We are

accustomed to designate the nation by the name of Berbers, which the

Arabs apply to the northern tribes.

[Sidenote: Type.]

As to their type they stand far nearer to the Indo-Germanic than

to the Semitic, and form even at the present day, when since the

invasion of Islam North Africa has fallen to the Semitic race, the

sharpest contrast to the Arabs. It is not without warrant that

various geographers of antiquity have refused to let Africa pass at

all as a third continent, but have attached Egypt to Asia and the

Berber territory to Europe. As the plants and animals of northern

Africa correspond in the main to those of the opposite south-European

coast, so the type of man, where it has been preserved unmixed,

points altogether to the north:--the fair hair and the blue eyes of a

considerable portion, the tall stature, the slender but powerfully knit

form, the prevailing monogamy and respect for the position of woman,

the lively and emotional temperament, the inclination to settled life,

the community founded on the full equality in rights among the grown-up

men, which in the usual confederation of several communities affords

also the basis for the formation of a state.[276] To strictly political

development and to full civilisation this nation, hemmed round by

Negroes, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, at no time attained;

it must have approximated to it under the government of Massinissa.

The alphabet, derived independently from the Phoenician, of which

the Berbers made use under Roman rule, and which those of the Sahara

still use at the present day, as well as the feeling which, as we have

observed, they once had of common national relationship, may probably

be referred to the great Numidian king and his descendants, whom the

later generations worshipped as gods.[277] In spite of all invasions

they have maintained their original territory to a considerable

extent; in Morocco now about two-thirds, in Algiers about half of the

inhabitants are reckoned of Berber descent.

[Sidenote: Phoenician immigration.]

The immigration, to which all the coasts of the Mediterranean were

subjected in the earliest times, made North Africa Phoenician. To the

Phoenicians the natives had to give up the largest and best part of

the north coast; the Phoenicians withdrew all North Africa from Greek

civilisation. The Great Syrtis again forms the linguistic as well

as the political line of separation; as on the east the Pentapolis

of Cyrene belongs to the Greek circle, so on the west the Tripolis

(Tripoli) of Great-Leptis became and remained Phoenician. We have

formerly narrated how the Phoenicians after several hundred years of

struggle succumbed to the Romans. Here we have to give account of the

fortunes of Africa, after the Romans had occupied the Carthaginian

territory and had made the neighbouring regions dependent on them.

[Sidenote: The government of the Roman republic.]

The short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness--we may here say, the

perversity and brutality--of the foreign government of the Roman

republic had nowhere so full sway as in Africa. In southern Gaul,

and still more in Spain, the Roman government pursued at least a

consolidated extension of territory, and, half involuntarily, the

rudiments of Latinising; in the Greek East the foreign rule was

mitigated and often almost compensated by the power of Hellenism

forcing the hand even of hard policy. But as to this third continent

the old national hatred towards the Poeni seemed still to reach beyond

the grave of Hannibal’s native city. The Romans held fast the territory

which Carthage had possessed at its fall, but less in order to develop

it for their own benefit than to prevent its benefiting others, not

to awaken new life there, but to watch the dead body; it was fear and

envy, rather than ambition and covetousness, that created the province

of Africa. Under the republic it had not a history; the war with

Jugurtha was for Africa nothing but a lion-hunt, and its historical

significance lay in its connection with the republican party struggles.

The land was, as a matter of course, turned to full account by Roman

speculation; but neither might the destroyed great city rise up afresh,

nor might a neighbouring town develop into a similar prosperity; there

were here no standing camps as in Spain and Gaul; the Roman province,

with its narrow bounds, was on all sides surrounded by relatively

civilised territory of the dependent king of Numidia, who had helped

in the work of the destruction of Carthage, and now, as a reward

for it, received not so much the spoil as the task of protecting it

from the inroads of the wild hordes of the interior. That thereby a

political and military importance was given to this state, such as no

other client-state of Rome ever possessed, and that even on this side

the Roman policy, in order merely to banish the phantom of Carthage,

conjured up serious dangers, was shown by the share of Numidia in the

civil wars of Rome; never during all the internal crises of the empire

before or after did a client-prince play such a part as the last king

of Numidia in the war of the republicans against Caesar.

[Sidenote: Caesar’s African policy.]

All the more necessarily the state of things in Africa became

transformed by this decision of arms. In the other provinces, as a

consequence of the civil wars, there was a change of rule; in Africa

there was a change of system. The African possession of the Phoenicians

itself was not a proper dominion over Africa; it may be in some measure

compared with the dominion in Asia Minor of the Hellenes before

Alexander. Of this dominion the Romans had then taken over but a small

part, and of that part they had nipped the bud. Now Carthage arose

afresh, and, as if the soil had only been waiting for the seed, soon

flourished anew. The whole country lying behind--the great kingdom of

Numidia--became a Roman province, and the protection of the frontier

against the barbarians was undertaken by the Roman legionaries.

The kingdom of Mauretania became, in the first instance, a Roman

dependency, and soon also a part of the Roman empire. With the dictator

Caesar the civilising and Latinising of Africa took their place among

the tasks of the Roman government. Here we have to set forth how the

task was carried out, first as to the outward organisation, and then as

to the arrangements made and results achieved for the several districts.

[Sidenote: Extent of the Roman rule.]

Territorial sovereignty over the whole of North Africa had doubtless

already been claimed on the part of the Roman republic, perhaps as a

portion of the Carthaginian inheritance, perhaps because “our sea”

early became one of the fundamental ideas of the Roman commonwealth;

and, in so far, all its coasts were regarded by the Romans even of the

developed republic as their true property. Nor had this claim of Rome

ever been properly contested by the larger states of North Africa after

the destruction of Carthage; if in many places the neighbours did not

submit to the dominion, they were just as little obedient to their

local rulers. That the silver moneys of king Juba I. of Numidia and of

king Bogud of Mauretania were coined after the Roman standard, and the

Latin legend--little as it was suited to the relations of language and

of intercourse then subsisting in North Africa--was never absent from

them, was the direct recognition of the Roman supremacy, a consequence,

it may be presumed, of the new organisation of North Africa that in the

year 674 U.C. {80 B.C.} was accomplished by Pompeius. The generally

insignificant resistance which the Africans, apart from Carthage,

opposed to the Romans, came from the descendants of Massinissa; after

king Jugurtha, and later king Juba, were vanquished, the princes of the

western country submitted without more ado to the dependence required

of them. The arrangements which the emperors made were carried out

quite after the same way in the territory of the dependent princes as

in the immediate territory of Rome; it was the Roman government that

regulated the boundaries in all North Africa, and constituted Roman

communities at its discretion in the kingdom of Mauretania no less

than in the province of Numidia. We cannot therefore speak, in the

strict sense, of a Roman subjugation of North Africa. The Romans did

not conquer it like the Phoenicians or the French; but they ruled over

Numidia as over Mauretania, first as suzerains, then as successors of

the native governments. It is so much the more a question, whether

the notion of frontier admits of application to Africa in the usual

sense. The states of Massinissa, of Bocchus, of Bogud, as also

the Carthaginian, proceeded from the northern verge, and all the

civilisation of North Africa is based pre-eminently on this coast;

but, so far as we can discern, they all regarded the tribes settled

or roving in the south as subjects, and, if they withdrew themselves

from subjection, as insurgents, so far as the distance and the desert

did not by doing away with contact do away with control. Neighbouring

states, with which relations of right or of treaty might have

subsisted, can hardly be pointed out in the south of northern Africa,

or where such a one appears, such as, in particular, the kingdom of the

Garamantes, its position is not to be strictly distinguished from that

of the hereditary principalities within the civilised territory. This

was the case also as regards Roman Africa; as for the previous rulers,

so also doubtless for Roman civilisation there was to be found a limit

to the south, but hardly so for the Roman territorial supremacy. There

is never mention of any formal extension or taking back of the frontier

in Africa; the insurrections in the Roman territory, and the inroads

of the neighbouring peoples, look here all the more similar to each

other, as even in the regions undoubtedly in Roman possession, still

more than in Syria or Spain, many a remote and impassable district knew

nothing of Roman taxation and of Roman recruiting. For that reason it

seems appropriate to connect with the view of the several provinces

at the same time the slight information which has been left to us in

historical tradition, or by means of preserved monuments, respecting

the friendly or hostile relations of the Romans with their southern

neighbours.

[Sidenote: Province of Africa and Numidia.]

The former territory of Carthage and the larger part of the earlier

kingdom of Numidia, united with it by the dictator Caesar, or, as they

also called it, the old and the new Africa, formed until the end of the

reign of Tiberius the province of that name, which extended from the

boundary of Cyrene to the river Ampsaga, embracing the modern state

of Tripoli as well as Tunis and the French province of Constantine

(iv. 470 f.) {iv. 447.}. The government, however, for this territory,

which was considerable, and required an extended frontier-defence,

reverted under the emperor Gaius in the main to the twofold division

of the republican times, and committed the portion of the province

that did not stand in need of special border-defence to the civil

government, and the rest of the territory furnished with garrisons to

a military commandant not further amenable to its authority. The cause

of this was, that Africa in the partition of the provinces between

emperor and senate was given to the latter, and, as from the state

of things there a command on a larger scale could not be dispensed

with, the co-ordination of the governor delegated by the senate and

of the military commandant nominated by the emperor--which latter

according to the subsisting hierarchy was placed under the orders of

the former--could not but provoke and did provoke collisions between

these officials and even between emperor and senate. To this an end was

put in the year 37 by an arrangement that the coast-land from Hippo

(Bonah), as far as the borders of Cyrene, should retain the old name

of Africa and should remain with the proconsul, whereas the western

part of the province with the capital Cirta (Constantine), as well

as the interior with the great military camps to the north of the

Aures, and generally all territory furnished with garrisons, should

be placed under the commandant of the African legion. This commandant

had senatorial rank, but belonged not to the consular, but to the

praetorial class.

[Sidenote: The two Mauretanian kingdoms.]

The western half of North Africa was divided at the time of the

dictator Caesar (iv. 461) {iv. 438.} into the two kingdoms of Tingi

(Tangier), at that time under king Bogud and of Iol, the later

Caesarea (Zershell), at that time under king Bocchus. As both kings

had as decidedly taken the side of Caesar in the struggle against

the republicans as king Juba of Numidia had taken the side of the

opposite party, and as they had rendered most essential services to

him during the African and the Spanish wars, not merely were both left

in possession of their rule, but the domain of Bocchus, and probably

also that of Bogud, was enlarged by the victor.[278] Then, when the

rivalries between Antonius and Caesar the younger began, king Bogud

alone in the west placed himself on the side of Antonius, and on the

instigation of his brother and of his wife invaded Spain during the

Perusine war (714) {40 B.C.}; but his neighbour Bocchus and his own

capital Tingis took part for Caesar and against him. At the conclusion

of peace Antonius allowed Bogud to fall, and Caesar gave the rest of

his territory to king Bocchus, but gave Roman municipal rights to the

town of Tingis. When, some years later, a rupture took place between

the two rulers, the ex-king took part energetically in the struggle in

the hope of regaining his kingdom on this occasion, but at the capture

of the Messenian town Methone he was taken prisoner by Agrippa and

executed.

[Sidenote: Juba II.]

Already some years before (721) {33 B.C.} king Bocchus had died;

his kingdom, the whole of western Africa, was soon afterwards (729)

{25 B.C.} obtained by the son of the last Numidian king, Juba II.,

the husband of Cleopatra, the daughter of Antonius by the Egyptian

queen.[279] Both had been exhibited to the Roman public in early youth

as captive kings’ children, Juba in the triumphal procession of Caesar

the father, Cleopatra in that of the son; it was a wonderful juncture

that they now were sent away from Rome as king and queen of the most

esteemed vassal-state of the empire, but it was in keeping with the

circumstances. Both were brought up in the imperial family; Cleopatra

was treated by the legitimate wife of her father with motherly kindness

like her own children; Juba had served in Caesar’s army. The youth of

the dependent princely houses, which was numerously represented at the

imperial court and played a considerable part in the circle around

the imperial princes, was generally employed in the early imperial

period for the filling up of the vassal principalities, after a similar

manner, according to free selection, as the first class in rank of the

senate was employed for the filling up of the governorships of Syria

and Germany. For almost fifty years (729-775 U.C., 25 B.C-A.D. 23) he,

and after him his son Ptolemaeus, bore rule over western Africa; it is

true that, like the town Tingis from his predecessor, a considerable

number of the most important townships, particularly on the coast, was

withdrawn from him by the bestowal of Roman municipal rights, and,

apart from the capital, these kings of Mauretania were almost nothing

but princes of the Berber tribes.

[Sidenote: Erection of the provinces of Caesarea and Tingi.]

This government lasted up to the year 40, when it appeared fitting to

the emperor Gaius, chiefly on account of the rich treasure, to call

his cousin to Rome, to deliver him there to the executioner, and to

take the territory into imperial administration. Both rulers were

unwarlike, the father a Greek man of letters after the fashion of this

period, compiling so-called memorabilia of a historical or geographical

kind, or relative to the history of art, in endless books, noteworthy

by his--we might say--international literary activity, well read in

Phoenician and Syrian literature, but exerting himself above all to

diffuse the knowledge of Roman habits and of so-called Roman history

among the Hellenes, moreover, a zealous friend of art and frequenter

of the theatre; the son a prince of the common type, passing his time

in court-life and princely luxury. Among their subjects they were

held of little account, whether as regards their personality or as

vassals of the Romans; against the Gaetulians in the south king Juba

had on several occasions to invoke the help of the Roman governor,

and, when in Roman Africa the prince of the Numidians, Tacfarinas,

revolted against the Romans, the Moors flocked in troops to his banner.

Nevertheless the end of the dynasty and the introduction of Roman

provincial government into the land made a deep impression. The Moors

were faithfully devoted to their royal house; altars were still erected

under the Roman rule in Africa to the kings of the race of Massinissa

(p. 305). Ptolemaeus, whatever he might be otherwise, was Massinissa’s

genuine descendant in the sixth generation, and the last of the old

royal house. A faithful servant of his, Aedemon, after the catastrophe

called the mountain-tribes of the Atlas to arms, and it was only after

a hard struggle that the governor Suetonius Paullinus--the same who

afterwards fought with the Britons (I. 179)--was able to master the

revolt (in the year 42). In the organisation of the new territory

the Romans reverted to the earlier division into an eastern and a

western half, or, as they were thenceforth called from the capitals,

into the provinces of Caesarea and of Tingi; or rather they retained

that division, for it was, as will be afterwards shown, necessarily

suggested by the physical and political relations of the territory,

and must have continued to subsist even under the same sceptre in one

or the other form. Each of these provinces was furnished with imperial

troops of the second class, and placed under an imperial governor not

belonging to the senate.

The state and the destinies of this great and peculiar new seat of

Latin civilisation were conditioned by the physical constitution of

North Africa. It is formed by two great mountain-masses, of which the

northern falls steeply towards the Mediterranean, while the southern,

the Atlas, slopes off slowly in the Sahara-steppe dotted with numerous

oases towards the desert proper. A smaller steppe, similar on the whole

to the Sahara and dotted with numerous salt-lakes, serves in the middle

portion, the modern Algeria, to separate the mountains on the north

coast and those on the southern frontier. There are in North Africa no

extensive plains capable of culture; the coast of the Mediterranean

Sea has a level foreland only in a few districts; the land capable of

cultivation, according to the modern expression the Tell, consists

essentially of the numerous valleys and slopes within those two broad

mountain-masses, and so extends to its greatest width where, as in the

modern Morocco and in Tunis, no steppe intervenes between the northern

and the southern border.

[Sidenote: Tripolis.]

The region of Tripolis, politically a part of the province of

Africa, stands as respects its natural relations outside of the

territory described, and is annexed to it in peninsular fashion. The

frontier-range sloping down towards the Mediterranean Sea touches at

the bay of Tacapae (Gabes), with its foreland of steppe and salt-lake,

immediately on the shore. To the south of Tacapae as far as the Great

Syrtis there extends along the coast the narrow Tripolitan island of

cultivation, bounded inland towards the steppe by a chain of moderate

height. Beyond it begins the steppe-country with numerous oases. The

protection of the coast against the inhabitants of the desert is here

of special difficulty, because the high margin of mountains is wanting;

and traces of this are apparent in the accounts that have come to us of

the military expeditions and the military positions in this region.

[Sidenote: The wars with the Garamantes.]

It was the arena of the wars with the Garamantes. Lucius Cornelius

Balbus, who in his younger years had fought and administered under

Caesar with the most adventurous boldness as well as with the

most cruel recklessness, was selected by Augustus to reduce these

inconvenient neighbours to quiet, and in his proconsulate (735) he

subdued the interior as far as Cidamus (Ghadames), twelve days’

journey inland from Tripolis, and Garama (Germa) in Fezzan;[280] at

his triumph--he was the last commoner who celebrated such an one--a

long series of towns and tribes, hitherto unknown even by name, were

displayed as vanquished. This expedition is named a conquest; and

so doubtless the foreland must have been thereby brought in some

measure under the Roman power. There was fighting subsequently on

many occasions in this region. Soon afterwards, still under Augustus,

Publius Sulpicius Quirinius made an expedition against the tribes of

Marmarica, that is, of the Libyan desert above Cyrene, and at the same

time against the Garamantes. That the war against Tacfarinas under

Tiberius extended also over this region will be mentioned further

on. After its termination the king of the Garamantes sent envoys to

Rome, to procure pardon for his having taken part in it. In the year

70 an irruption of the Garamantes into the pacified territory was

brought about by the circumstance that the town Oea (Tripoli) called

the barbarians to help the Tripolis in a quarrel, which had grown

into war, with the neighbouring town Great-Leptis (Lebda), whereupon

they were beaten back by the governor of Africa and pursued to their

own settlements. Under Domitian on the coast of the Great Syrtis,

which had been from of old held by the Nasamones, a revolt of the

natives provoked by the exorbitant taxes had to be repressed with

arms by the governor of Numidia; the territory already poor in men

was utterly depopulated by this cruelly conducted war. The emperor

Severus took conspicuous care of this his native province--he was from

Great-Leptis--and gave to it stronger military protection against the

neighbouring barbarians. With this we may bring into connection the

fact, that in the time from Severus to Alexander the nearest oases,

Cidamus (Ghadames), Gharia el Gharbia, Bonjem, were provided with

detachments of the African legion, which, it is true, owing to the

distance from the headquarters, could not be much more than a nucleus

for the probably considerable contingents of the subject tribes here

rendering services to the Romans. In fact the possession of these oases

was of importance not merely for the protection of the coast, but also

for the traffic, which at all times passed by way of these oases from

the interior of Africa to the harbours of Tripolis. It was not till

the time of decay that the possession of these advanced posts was

abandoned; in the description of the African wars under Valentinian

and Justinian we find the towns of the coast directly harassed by the

natives.

[Sidenote: The Africano-Numidian territory and army.]

The basis and core of Roman Africa was the province of that name,

including the Numidian, which was a branch from it. Roman civilisation

entered upon the heritage partly of the city of Carthage, partly of

the kings of Numidia, and if it here attained considerable results, it

may never be forgotten that it, properly speaking, merely wrote its

name and inscribed its language on what was already there. Besides the

towns, which were demonstrably founded by the former or by the latter,

and to which we shall still return, the former as well as the latter

led the Berber tribes, inclined at any rate to agriculture, towards

fixed settlements. Even in the time of Herodotus the Libyans westward

of the bay of Gabes were no longer nomads, but peacefully cultivated

the soil; and the Numidian rulers carried civilisation and agriculture

still farther into the interior. Nature, too, was here more favourable

for husbandry than in the western part of North Africa; the middle

depression between the northern and the southern range is indeed here

not quite absent, but the salt lakes and the steppe proper are less

extensive than in the two Mauretanias. The military arrangements were

chiefly designed to plant the troops in front of the mighty Aurasian

mountain-block, the Saint Gotthard of the southern frontier-range,

and to check the irruption of the non-subject tribes from the latter

into the pacified territory of Africa and Numidia. For that reason

Augustus placed the stationary quarters of the legion at Theveste

(Tebessa), on the high plateau between the Aures and the old province;

even to the north of it, between Ammaedara and Althiburus, Roman forts

existed in the first imperial period. Of the details of the warfare we

learn little; it must have been permanent, and must have consisted in

the constant repelling of the border-tribes, as well as in not less

constant pillaging raids into their territory.

[Sidenote: War against Tacfarinas.]

Only as to a single occurrence of this sort has information in some

measure accurate come to us; namely, as to the conflicts which derive

their name from the chief leader of the Berbers, Tacfarinas. They

assumed unusual proportions; they lasted eight years (17-24), and

the garrison of the province otherwise consisting of a legion was on

that account reinforced during the years 20-22 by a second despatched

thither from Pannonia. The war had its origin from the great tribe of

the Musulamii on the south slope of the Aures, against whom already

under Augustus Lentulus had conducted an expedition, and who now under

his successor chose that Tacfarinas as their leader. He was an African

Arminius, a native Numidian, who had served in the Roman army, but had

then deserted and made himself a name at the head of a band of robbers.

The insurrection extended eastwards as far as the Cinithii on the

Little Syrtis and the Garamantes in Fezzan, westwards over a great part

of Mauretania, and became dangerous through the fact that Tacfarinas

equipped a portion of his men after the Roman fashion on foot and on

horseback, and gave them Roman training; these gave steadiness to the

light bands of the insurgents, and rendered possible regular combats

and sieges. After long exertions, and after the senate had been on

several occasions induced to disregard the legally prescribed ballot in

filling up this important post of command, and to select fitting men

instead of the usual generals of the type of Cicero, Quintus Iunius

Blaesus in the first instance made an end of the insurrection by a

combined operation, inasmuch as he sent the left flank column against

the Garamantes, and with the right covered the outlets from the Aures

towards Cirta, while he advanced in person with the main army into the

territory of the Musulamii and permanently occupied it (year 22). But

the bold partisan soon afterwards renewed the struggle, and it was only

some years later that the proconsul Publius Cornelius Dolabella, after

he had nipped in the bud the threatened revolt of the just chastised

Musulamii by the execution of all the leaders, was able with the aid of

the troops of the king of Mauretania to force a battle in his territory

near Auzia (Aumale), in which Tacfarinas lost his life. With the fall

of the leader, as is usual in national wars of insurrection, this

movement had an end.[281]

[Sidenote: Later conflicts.]

From later times detailed accounts of a like kind are lacking; we

can only follow out in some measure the general course of the Roman

work of pacification. The tribes to the south of Aures were, if not

extirpated, at any rate ejected and transplanted into the northern

districts; so in particular the Musulamii themselves,[282] against

whom an expedition was once more conducted under Claudius. The demand

made by Tacfarinas to have settlements assigned to him and his people

within the civilised territory, to which Tiberius, as was reasonable,

only replied by redoubling his exertions to annihilate the daring

claimant, was supplementarily after a certain measure fulfilled in

this way, and probably contributed materially to the consolidation of

the Roman government. The camps more and more enclosed the Aurasian

mountain-block. The garrisons were pushed farther forward into the

interior; the headquarters themselves moved under Trajan away from

Theveste farther to the west; the three considerable Roman settlements

on the northern slope of the Aures, Mascula (Khenschela), at the egress

of the valley of the Arab and thereby the key to the Aures mountains, a

colony at least already under Marcus and Verus; Thamugadi, a foundation

of Trajan’s; and Lambaesis, after Hadrian’s day the headquarters of

the African army, formed together a settlement comparable to the great

military camps on the Rhine and on the Danube, which, laid out on the

lines of communication from the Aures to the great towns of the north

and the coast Cirta (Constantine), Calama (Gelma), and Hippo regius

(Bonah), secured the peace of the latter. The intervening steppe-land

was, so far as it could not be gained for cultivation, at least

intersected by secure routes of communication. On the west side of

the Aures a strongly occupied chain of posts which followed the slope

of the mountains from Lambaesis over the oases Calceus Herculis (el

Kantara) and Bescera (Beskra), cut off the connection with Mauretania.

Even the interior of the mountains subsequently became Roman; the war,

which was waged under the emperor Pius in Africa, and concerning

which we have not accurate information, must have brought the Aurasian

mountains into the power of the Romans. At that time a military road

was carried through these mountains by a legion doing garrison duty

in Syria and sent beyond doubt on account of this war to Africa, and

in later times we meet at that very spot traces of Roman garrisons

and even of Roman towns, which reach down to Christian times; the

Aurasian range had thus at that time been occupied, and continued to

be permanently occupied. The oasis Negrin, situated on its southern

slope, was even already under or before Trajan furnished by the Romans

with troops, and still somewhat farther southward on the extreme verge

of the steppe at Bir Mohammed ben Jûnis are found the ruins of a Roman

fort; a Roman road also ran along the southern base of this range.

Of the mighty slope which falls from the table-land of Theveste, the

watershed between the Mediterranean and the desert, in successive

stages of two to three hundred mètres down to the latter, this oasis

is the last terrace; at its base begins, in sharp contrast towards

the jagged mountains piled up behind, the sand desert of Suf, with

its yellow rows of dunes similar to waves, and the sandy soil moved

about by the wind, a huge wilderness, without elevation of the ground,

without trees, fading away without limit into the horizon. Negrin was

certainly of old, as it still is in our time, the standing rendezvous

and the last place of refuge of the robber chiefs as well as of the

natives defying foreign rule--a position commanding far and wide the

desert and its trading routes. Even to this extreme limit reached Roman

occupation and even Roman settlement in Numidia.

[Sidenote: Roman civilisation in Mauretania.]

Mauretania was not a heritage like Africa and Numidia. Of its earlier

condition we learn nothing; there cannot have been considerable towns

even on the coast here in earlier times, and neither Phoenician

stimulus nor sovereigns after the type of Massinissa effectively

promoted civilisation in this quarter. When his last descendants

exchanged the Numidian crown for the Mauretanian, the capital, which

changed its name Iol into Caesarea, became the residence of a

cultivated and luxurious court, and a seat of seafaring and of traffic.

But how much less this possession was esteemed by the government than

that of the neighbouring province, is shown by the difference of the

provincial organisation; the two Mauretanian armies were together not

inferior in number to the Africano-Numidian,[283] but here governors

of equestrian rank and imperial soldiers of the class of _peregrini_

sufficed. Caesarea remained a considerable commercial town; but in

the province the fixed settlement was restricted to the northern

mountain-range, and it was only in the eastern portion that larger

inland towns were to be found. Even the fertile valley of the most

considerable river of this province, the Shelîf, shows weak urban

development; further to the west in the valleys of the Tafna and the

Malua it almost wholly disappears, and the names of the divisions of

cavalry here stationed serve partly in place of local designations. The

province of Tingi (Tangier) even now embraced nothing but this town

with its immediate territory and the stripe of the coast along the

Atlantic Ocean as far as Sala, the modern Rebât, while in the interior

Roman settlement did not even reach to Fez. No land-route connects this

province with that of Caesarea; the 220 miles from Tingi to Rusaddir

(Melilla) they traversed by water, along the desolate and insubordinate

coast of the Riff. Consequently for this province the communication

with Baetica was nearer than that with Mauretania; and if subsequently,

when the empire was divided into larger administrative districts, the

province of Tingi fell to Spain, that measure was only the outward

carrying out of what in reality had long subsisted. It was for Baetica

what Germany was for Gaul; and, far from lucrative as it must have

been, it was perhaps instituted and retained for the reason that its

abandonment would even then have brought about an invasion of Spain

similar to that which Islam accomplished after the collapse of the

Roman rule.

[Sidenote: The Gaetulian wars.]

Beyond the limit of fixed settlement herewith indicated,--the line of

frontier tolls and of frontier posts--and in various non-civilised

districts enclosed by it, the land in the two Mauretanias during the

Roman times remained doubtless with the natives, but they came under

Roman supremacy; there would be claimed from them, as far as possible,

taxes and war-services, but the regular forms of taxation and of levy

would not be applied in their case. For example, the tribe of Zimizes,

which was settled on the rocky coast to the west of Igilgili (Jijeli)

in eastern Mauretania, and so in the heart of the domain of the Roman

power, had assigned to it a fortress designed to cover the town of

Igilgili, to be occupied on such a footing that the troops were not

allowed to pass beyond the radius of 500 paces round the fort.[284]

They thus employed these subject Berbers in the Roman interest, but did

not organise them in the Roman fashion, and hence did not treat them

as soldiers of the imperial army. Even beyond their own province the

irregulars from Mauretania were employed in great numbers, particularly

as horsemen in the later period,[285] while the same did not hold of

the Numidians.

How far the field of the Roman power went beyond the Roman towns and

garrisons and the end of the imperial roads, we are not able to say.

The broad steppe-land round the salt-lakes to the west of Lambaesis,

the mountain-region from Tlemsen till towards Fez, including the coast

of the Riff, the fine corn-country on the Atlantic Ocean southward

from Sala as far as the high Atlas, the civilisation of which in the

flourishing time of the Arabs vied with the Andalusian, lastly, the

Atlas range in the south of Algeria and Morocco and its southern

slopes, which afforded for pastoral people abundant provision in the

alternation of mountain and steppe pastures, and developed the most

luxuriant fertility in the numerous oases--all these regions remained

essentially untouched by the Roman civilisation; but from this it does

not follow that they were in the Roman time independent, and still

less that they were not at least reckoned as belonging to the imperial

domain. Tradition gives us but slight information in this respect. We

have already mentioned (p. 313) that the proconsuls of Africa helped to

make the Gaetulians--that is, the tribes in southern Algeria--subject

to king Juba; and the latter constructed purple dyeworks at Madeira

(p. 338, note). After the end of the Mauretanian dynasty and the

introduction of the immediate Roman administration, Suetonius Paullinus

crossed, as the first Roman general, the Atlas (p. 313), and carried

his arms as far as the desert-river Ger, which still bears the same

name, in the south-east of Morocco. His successor, Gnaeus Hosidius

Geta, continued this enterprise, and emphatically defeated the leader

of the Mauri Salabus. Subsequently several enterprising governors of

the Mauretanian provinces traversed these remote regions, and the

same holds true of the Numidian, under whose command, not under the

Mauretanian, was placed the frontier-range stretching southward behind

the province of Caesarea;[286] yet nothing is mentioned from later

times of war-expeditions proper in the south of Mauretania or Numidia.

The Romans can scarcely have taken over the empire of the Mauretanian

kings in quite the same extent as these had possessed it; but yet the

expeditions that were undertaken after the annexation of the country

were probably not without lasting consequences. At least a portion

of the Gaetulians submitted, as the auxiliary troops levied there

prove, even to the regular conscription during the imperial period;

and, if the native tribes in the south of the Roman provinces had

given serious trouble to the Romans, the traces of it would not have

been wholly wanting.[287] Probably the whole south as far as the great

desert passed as imperial land,[288] and even the effective dependence

extended far beyond the domain of Roman civilisation, which, it is

true, does not exclude frequent levying of contributions and pillaging

raids on the one side or the other.

[Sidenote: Incursions of the Moors into Spain.]

[Sidenote: Quinquegentiani.]

The pacified territory experienced attack, properly so called, chiefly

from the inhabitants of the shore settled around and along the Riff,

the Mazices, and the Baquates; and this indeed took place, as a rule,

by sea, and was directed chiefly against the Spanish coast (I. 67).

Accounts of inroads of the Moors into Baetica run through the whole

imperial period,[289] and show that the Romans, in consequence of the

absence of energetic offensive, found themselves here permanently

on a defensive, which indeed did not involve a vital danger for the

empire, but yet brought constant insecurity and often sore harm over

rich and peaceful regions. The civilised territories of Africa appear

to have suffered less under the Moorish attacks, probably because the

headquarters of Numidia, immediately on the Mauretanian frontier, and

the strong garrisons on the west side of the Aures, did their duty. But

on the collapse of the imperial power in the third century the invasion

here also began; the feud of Five Peoples, as it was called, which

broke out about the time of Gallienus, and on account of which twenty

years later the emperor Maximianus went personally to Africa, arose

from the tribes beyond the Shott on the Numido-Mauretanian frontier,

and affected particularly the towns of Eastern Mauretania and of

Western Numidia, such as Auzia and Mileu.[290]

[Sidenote: Continuance of the Berber language.]

We come to the internal organisation of the country. In respect of

language, that which belonged properly to the people was treated

like the Celtic in Gaul and the Iberian in Spain; here in Africa all

the more, as the earlier foreign rule had already set the example in

that respect, and certainly no Roman understood this popular idiom.

The Berber tribes had not merely a national language, but also a

national writing (p. 305); but never, so far as we see, was use made

of it in official intercourse, at least it was never put upon the

coins. Even the native Berber dynasties formed no exception to this,

whether because in their kingdoms the more considerable towns were

more Phoenician than Libyan, or because the Phoenician civilisation

prevailed so far generally. The language was written indeed also

under Roman rule, in fact most of the Berber votive or sepulchral

inscriptions proceed certainly from the imperial period; but their

rarity proves that it attained only to limited written use in the

sphere of the Roman rule. It maintained itself as a popular language

above all naturally in the districts, to which the Romans came little

or not at all, as in the Sahara, in the mountains of the Riff of

Morocco, in the two Kabylias; but even the fertile and early cultivated

island of the Tripolis, Girba (Jerba), the seat of the Carthaginian

purple manufacture, still at the present day speaks Libyan. Taken on

the whole, the old popular idiom in Africa defended itself better than

among the Celts and the Iberians.

[Sidenote: Continuance of the Phoenician language.]

The language which prevailed in North Africa, when it became Roman,

was that of the foreign rule which preceded the Roman. Leptis,

probably not the Tripolitan, but that near Hadrumetum, was the only

African town which marked its coins with a Greek legend, and thus

conceded to this language an at least secondary position in public

intercourse. The Phoenician language prevailed at that time so far as

there was a civilisation in North Africa, from Great Leptis to Tingi,

most thoroughly in and around Carthage, but not less in Numidia and

Mauretania.[291] To this language of a highly developed although

foreign culture certain concessions were made on the change in the

system of administration. Perhaps already under Caesar, certainly under

Augustus and Tiberius, as well the towns of the Roman province, such as

Great Leptis and Oea, as those of the Mauretanian kingdom, like Tingi

and Lix, employed in official use the Phoenician language, even those

which like Tingi had become Roman burgess-communities. Nevertheless

they did not go so far in Africa as in the Greek half of the empire. In

the Greek provinces of the empire the Greek language prevailed, as in

business intercourse generally, so particularly in direct intercourse

with the imperial government and its officials; the coin of the city

organised after the Greek fashion names also the emperor in Greek. But

in the African the coin, even if it speaks in another language, names

the emperor or the imperial official always in Latin. Even on the coins

of the kings of Mauretania the name of the Greek queen stands possibly

in Greek, but that of the king--also an imperial official--uniformly in

Latin, even where the queen is named beside him. That is to say, even

the government did not admit the Phoenician in its intercourse with the

communities and individuals in Africa, but it allowed it for internal

intercourse; it was not a third imperial language, but a language of

culture recognised in its own sphere.

But this limited recognition of the Phoenician language did not long

subsist. There is no document for the public use of Phoenician from

the time after Tiberius, and it hardly survived the time of the first

dynasty.[292] How and when the change set in we do not know; probably

the government, perhaps Tiberius or Claudius, spoke the decisive word

and accomplished the linguistic and national annexation of the African

Phoenicians as far as it could be done by state authority. In private

intercourse the Phoenician held its ground still for a long time in

Africa, longer apparently than in the motherland; at the beginning

of the third century ladies of genteel houses in Great Leptis spoke

so little Latin or Greek, that there was no place for them in Roman

society; even at the end of the fourth there was a reluctance to

appoint clergymen in the environs of Hippo Regius (Bona), who could

not make themselves intelligible in Punic to their countrymen; these

termed themselves at that time still Canaanites, and Punic names

and Punic phrases were still current. But the language was banished

from the school[293] and even from written use, and had become a

popular dialect; and even this probably only in the region of the old

Phoenician civilisation, particularly the old Phoenician places on the

coast that stood aloof from intercourse on a large scale.[294] When the

Arabs came to Africa they found as language of the country doubtless

that of the Berbers, but no longer that of the Poeni;[295] with the

Carthagino-Roman civilisation the two foreign languages disappeared,

while the old native one still lives in the present day. The civilised

foreign dominions changed; the Berbers remained like the palm of the

oasis and the sand of the desert.

[Sidenote: The Latin language.]

The heritage of the Phoenician language fell not to Greek, but to

Latin. This was not involved in the natural development. In Caesar’s

time the Latin and the Greek were alike in North Africa foreign

languages, but as the coins of Leptis already show, the latter by

far more diffused than the former; Latin was spoken then only by the

officials, the soldiers, and the Italian merchants. It would have at

that time been probably easier to introduce the Hellenising of Africa

than the Latinising of it. But it was the converse that took place.

Here the same will prevailed, which did not allow the Hellenic germs to

spring up in Gaul, and which incorporated Greek Sicily into the domain

of Latin speech; the same will, which drew the boundaries between the

Latin West and the Greek East, assigned Africa to the former.

[Sidenote: The Phoenician urban organisation.]

In a similar sense the internal organisation of the country was

regulated. It was based, as in Italy on the Latin and in the East on

the Hellenic urban community, so here on the Phoenician. When the

Roman rule in Africa began, the Carthaginian territory at that time

consisted predominantly of urban communities, for the most part small,

of which there were counted three hundred, each administered by its

sufetes;[296] and the republic had made no change in this respect.

Even in the kingdoms the towns formerly Phoenician had retained their

organisation under the native rulers, and at least Calama--an inland

town of Numidia hardly of Phoenician foundation--had demonstrably

the same Phoenician municipal constitution; the civilisation which

Massinissa gave to his kingdom must have consisted essentially in his

transforming the villages of the agricultural Berbers into towns after

the Phoenician model. The same will hold good of the few older urban

communities which existed in Mauretania before Augustus. So far as

we see, the two annually changing sufetes of the African communities

coincide in the main with the analogous presidents of the community

in the Italian municipal constitution; and that in other respects,

_e.g._ in the common councils among the Carthaginians formed after a

fashion altogether divergent from the Italian (ii. 16) {ii. 15.}, the

Phoenician urban constitution of Roman Africa has preserved national

peculiarities, does not at least admit of proof.[297] But the fact

itself that the contrast, if even but formal, of the Phoenician town

to the Italian was retained was, like the permission of the language,

a recognition of the Phoenician nationality and a certain security

for its continuance even under Roman rule. That it was recognised

in the first instance as the regular form of administration of the

African territory, is proved by the establishment of Carthage by Caesar

primarily as a Phoenician city as well under the old sufetes[298] as

in a certain measure with the old inhabitants, seeing that a great,

perhaps the greatest part of the new burgesses was taken from the

surrounding townships, again also under the protection of the great

goddess of the Punic Carthage, the queen of heaven Astarte, who at

that time marched in with her votaries anew into her old abode. It

is true that in Carthage itself this organisation soon gave place

to the Italian colonial constitution, and the protecting patroness

Astarte became the--at least in name--Latin Caelestis. But in the rest

of Africa and in Numidia the Phoenician urban organisation probably

remained throughout the first century the predominant one, in so far

as it pertained to all communities of recognised municipal rights and

lacking Roman or Latin organisation. Abolished in the proper sense

it doubtless was not, as in fact sufetes still occur under Pius; but

by degrees they everywhere make way for the duoviri, and the changed

principle of government entails in this sphere also its ultimate

consequences.

[Sidenote: Transformation of the Phoenician towns into Italian.]

The transformation of Phoenician urban rights into Italian began under

Caesar. The old Phoenician town of Utica, predecessor and heiress of

Carthage--as some compensation for the severe injury to its interests

by the restoration of the old capital of the country--obtained, as

the first Italian organisation in Africa, perhaps from the dictator

Caesar, Latin rights, certainly from his successor Augustus the

position of a Roman _municipium_. The town of Tingi received the

same rights, in gratitude for the fidelity which it had maintained

during the Perusine war (p. 311). Several others soon followed; yet

the number of communities with Roman rights in Africa down to Trajan

and Hadrian remained limited.[299] Thenceforth there were assigned on

a great scale--although, so far as we see, throughout by individual

bestowal--to communities hitherto Phoenician municipal or else colonial

rights; for the latter too were subsequently as a rule conferred

merely in a titular way without settlement of colonists. If the

dedications and memorials of all sorts, that formerly appeared but

sparingly in Africa, present themselves in abundance from the beginning

of the second century, this was doubtless chiefly the consequence of

the adoption of numerous townships into the imperial union of the towns

with best rights.

[Sidenote: Settlement of Italian colonists in Africa.]

Besides the conversion of Phoenician towns into Italian _municipia_ or

colonies, not a few towns of Italian rights arose in Africa by means

of the settlement of Italian colonists. For this too the dictator

Caesar laid the foundation--as indeed for no province perhaps so much

as for Africa were the paths prescribed by him--and the emperors of

the first dynasty followed his example. We have already spoken of the

founding of Carthage; the town obtained not at once, but very soon,

Italian settlers and therewith Italian organisation and full rights

of Roman citizenship. Beyond doubt from the outset destined once more

to be the capital of the province and laid out as a great city, it

rapidly in point of fact became so. Carthage and Lugudunum were the

only cities of the West which, besides the capital of the empire, had

a standing garrison of imperial troops. Moreover in Africa--in part

certainly already by the dictator, in part only by the first emperor--a

series of small country-towns in the districts nearest to Sicily,

Hippo Diarrhytus, Clupea, Curubi, Neapolis, Carpi, Maxula, Uthina,

Great-Thuburbo, Assuras, were furnished with colonies, probably not

merely to provide for veterans, but to promote the Latinising of this

region. The two colonies which arose at that time in the former kingdom

of Numidia, Cirta with its dependencies, and New-Cirta or Sicca, were

the result of special obligations of Caesar towards the leader of free

bands Publius Sittius from Nuceria and his Italiano-African bands

(iv. 470, 574) {iv. 447, 544.}. The former, inasmuch as the territory

on which it was laid out belonged at that time to a client-state (p.

311, note), obtained a peculiar and very independent organisation, and

retained it in part even later, although it soon became an imperial

city. Both rose rapidly and became considerable centres of Roman

civilisation in Africa.

[Sidenote: And in Mauretania.]

The colonisation, which Augustus undertook in the kingdom of Juba and

Claudius carried forward, bore another character. In Mauretania, still

at that time very primitive, there was a want both of towns and of the

elements for creating them; the settlement of soldiers of the Roman

army, who had served out their time, brought civilisation here into

a barbarous land. Thus in the later province of Caesarea along the

coast Igilgili, Saldae, Rusazu, Rusguniae, Gunugi, Cartenna (Tenes),

and farther away from the sea Thubusuptu and Zuccabar, were settled

with Augustan, and Oppidum Novum with Claudian, veterans; as also

in the province of Tingi under Augustus Zilis, Babba, Banasa, under

Claudius Lix. These communities with Roman burgess-rights were not, as

was already observed, under the kings of Mauretania, so long as there

were such, but were attached administratively to the adjoining Roman

province; consequently there was involved in these settlements, as

it were, a beginning towards the annexation of Mauretania.[300] The

pushing forward of civilisation, such as Augustus and Claudius aimed

at, was not subsequently continued, or at any rate continued only to

a very limited extent, although there was room enough for it in the

western half of the province of Caesarea and in that of Tingi; that

the later colonies regularly proceeded from titular bestowal without

settlement, has already been remarked (p. 332).

[Sidenote: Large landed estates.]

Alongside of this urban organisation we have specially to mention

that of the large landed estates in this province. According to Roman

arrangement it fitted itself regularly into the communal constitution;

even the extension of the _latifundia_ affected this relationship

less injuriously than we should think, since these, as a rule, were

not locally compact and were often distributed among several urban

territories. But in Africa the large estates were not merely more

numerous and more extensive than elsewhere, but these assumed also the

compactness of urban territories; around the landlord’s house there was

formed a settlement, which was not inferior to the small agricultural

towns of the province, and, if its president and common councillors

often did not venture and still oftener were not able to subject such a

fellow-burgess to the full payment of the communal burdens falling upon

him, the _de facto_ release of these estates from the communal bond of

union became still further marked, when such a possession passed over

into the hands of the emperor.[301] But this early occurred in Africa

to a great extent; Nero in particular, lighted with his confiscations

on the landowners, as is said, of half Africa, and what was once

imperial was wont to remain so. The small lessees, to whom the domanial

estate was farmed out, appear for the most part to have been brought

from abroad, and these imperial _coloni_ may be reckoned in a certain

measure as belonging to the Italian immigration.

[Sidenote: Organisation of the Berber communities.]

We have formerly remarked (p. 306) that the Berbers formed a

considerable portion of the population of Numidia and Mauretania

through the whole time of the Roman rule. But as to their internal

organisation hardly more can be ascertained than the emergence of the

clan (_gens_)[302] instead of the urban organisation under duoviri or

sufetes. The societies of the natives were not, like those of North

Italy, assigned as subjects to individual urban communities, but were

placed like the towns immediately under the governors, doubtless also,

where it seemed necessary, under a Roman officer specially placed over

them (_praefectus gentis_), and further under authorities of their

own[303]--the “headman” (_princeps_), who in later times bore possibly

the title of king, and the “eleven first.” Presumably this arrangement

was monarchical in contrast to the collegiate one of the Phoenician as

of the Latin community, and there stood alongside of the tribal chief a

limited number of elders instead of the numerous senate of decuriones

of the towns. The communities of natives in Roman Africa seem to have

attained afterwards to Italian organisation only by way of exception;

the African towns with Italian rights, which did not originate from

immigration, had doubtless for the most part Phoenician civic rights

previously. Exceptions occur chiefly in the case of transplanted

tribes, as indeed the considerable town Thubursicum originated from

such a forced settlement of Numidians. The Berber communities possessed

especially the mountains and the steppes; they obeyed the foreigners,

without either the masters or the subjects feeling any desire to come

to terms with one another; and, when other foreigners invaded the land,

their position in presence of the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Arabs,

the French, remained almost on the old footing.

[Sidenote: Husbandry.]

In the economy of the soil the eastern half of Africa vies with Egypt.

Certainly the soil is unequal, and rocks and steppes occupy not

only the greater portion of the western half, but also considerable

tracts in the eastern; here too there were various inaccessible

mountain-regions, which yielded but slowly or not at all to

civilisation; particularly on the rocky ridges along the coast the

Roman rule left few or no traces. Even the Byzacene, the south-eastmost

part of the proconsular province, is only designated as a specially

productive region by an erroneous generalisation of what holds good

as to individual coast districts and oases; from Sufetula (Sbitla)

westward the land is waterless and rocky; in the fifth century A.D.

Byzacene was reckoned to have about a half less per cent of land

capable of culture than the other African provinces. But the northern

and north-western portion of the proconsular province, above all the

valley of the largest river in north Africa, the Bagradas (Mejerda),

and not less a considerable part of Numidia, yield abundant grain

crops, almost like the valley of the Nile. In the favoured districts

the country towns, very frequent, as their ruins show, lay so near

to each other that the population here cannot have been much less

dense than in the land of the Nile, and according to all traces it

prosecuted especially husbandry. The mighty armed masses, with which

after the defeat at Pharsalus the republicans in Africa took up the

struggle against Caesar, were formed of these peasants, so that in the

year of war the fields lay untilled. Since Italy used more corn than

it produced, it was primarily dependent, in addition to the Italian

islands, on the almost equally near Africa; and after it became subject

to the Romans, its corn went thither not merely by way of commerce,

but above all as tribute. Already in Cicero’s time the capital of

the empire doubtless subsisted for the most part on African corn;

through the admission of Numidia under Caesar’s dictatorship the corn

thenceforth coming in as tribute increased according to the estimate

about 1,200,000 Roman bushels (525,000 hectolitres) annually. After the

Egyptian corn supplies were instituted under Augustus, for the third

part of the corn used in Rome North Africa was reckoned upon, and Egypt

for a like amount; while the desolated Sicily, Sardinia, and Baetica,

along with Italy’s own production, covered the rest of the need. In

what measure the Italy of the imperial period was dependent for its

subsistence on Africa is shown by the measures taken during the wars

between Vitellius and Vespasian and between Severus and Pescennius;

Vespasian thought that he had conquered Italy when he occupied Egypt

and Africa; Severus sent a strong army to Africa to hinder Pescennius

from occupying it.

[Sidenote: Oil and wine.]

Oil, too, and wine had already held a prominent place in the old

Carthaginian husbandry, and on Little-Leptis (near Susa), for

example, an annual payment of 3,000,000 pounds of oil (nearly 10,000

hectolitres) could be imposed by Caesar for the Roman baths, as indeed

Susa still at the present day exports 40,000 hectolitres of oil.

Accordingly the historian of the Jugurthan war terms Africa rich in

corn, poor in oil and wine, and even in Vespasian’s time the province

gave in this respect only a moderate yield. It was only when the peace

with the empire became permanent--a peace which the fruit-tree needed

even far more than the fruits of the field--that the culture of olives

extended; in the fourth century no province supplied such quantities

of oil as Africa, and the African oil was predominantly employed for

the baths in Rome. In quality, doubtless, it was always inferior to

that of Italy and Spain, not because nature there was less favourable,

but because the preparation lacked skill and care. The cultivation of

the vine acquired no prominent importance in Africa for export. On the

other hand the breeding of horses and of cattle flourished, especially

in Numidia and Mauretania.

[Sidenote: Manufactures and commerce.]

Manufactures and trade never had the same importance in the African

provinces as in the East and in Egypt. The Phoenicians had transplanted

the preparation of purple from their native country to these coasts,

where the island of Gerba (Jerba) became the African Tyre, and was

inferior only to the latter itself in quality. This manufacture

flourished through the whole imperial period. Among the few deeds which

king Juba II. has to show, is the arrangement for obtaining purple

on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and on the adjacent islands.[304]

Woollen stuffs of inferior quality and leather goods were manufactured

in Mauretania, apparently by the natives, also for export.[305] The

trade in slaves was very considerable. The products of the interior

of the country naturally passed by way of North Africa into general

commerce, but not to such an extent as by way of Egypt. The elephant,

it is true, was the device of Mauretania in particular, and there,

where it has now for long disappeared, it was still hunted down to the

imperial period; but probably only small quantities came thence into

commerce.

[Sidenote: Prosperity.]

The prosperity which subsisted in the part of Africa at all cultivated

is clearly attested by the ruins of its numerous towns, which, in

spite of the narrow bounds of their domains, everywhere exhibit baths,

theatres, triumphal arches, gorgeous tombs, and generally buildings

of luxury of all kinds, mostly mediocre in art, often excessive in

magnificence. Not quite in the villas of the superior nobility, as in

the Gallic land, but in the middle class of the farming burgesses must

the economic strength of these regions have lain.[306]

[Sidenote: Roads.]

The frequency of intercourse, so far as we may judge of it from our

knowledge of the network of roads, must within the civilised territory

have corresponded to the density of the population. During the first

century the imperial roads originated, which connected the headquarters

of that time, Theveste, partly with the coast of the Lesser Syrtis--a

step, having close relation to the formerly narrated pacification of

the district between the Aures and the sea--partly with the great

cities of the north coast, Hippo regius (Bona) and Carthage. From

the second century onward we find all the larger towns and several

smaller active in providing the necessary communications within their

territory; this, however, doubtless holds true of most of the imperial

lands, and only comes into clearer prominence in Africa, because

this opportunity was made use of more diligently here than elsewhere

to do homage to the reigning emperor. As to the road-system of the

districts, which though Roman were yet not Romanised, and as to the

routes which were the medium of the important traffic through the

desert, we have no general information.

[Sidenote: Introduction of camels.]

But probably a momentous revolution occurred in the desert-traffic

during that time by the introduction of the camel. In older times it

meets us, as is well known, only in Asia as far as Arabia, while Egypt

and all Africa knew simply the horse. During the first three centuries

of our era the countries effected an exchange, and, like the Arabian

horse, the Libyan camel, we may say, made its appearance in history.

Mention of the latter first occurs in the history of the war waged by

the dictator Caesar in Africa; when here among the booty by the side

of captive officers twenty-two camels of king Juba are adduced, such

a possession must at that time have been of an extraordinary nature

in Africa. In the fourth century the Roman generals demand from the

towns of Tripolis thousands of camels for the transport of water and of

provisions before they enter upon the march into the desert. This gives

a glimpse of the revolution that had taken place during the interval in

the circumstances of the intercourse between the north and the south of

Africa; whether it originated from Egypt or from Cyrene and Tripolis we

cannot tell, but it redounded to the advantage of the whole north of

this continent.

[Sidenote: Character and culture of the people.]

Thus North Africa was a valuable possession for the finances of the

empire. Whether the Roman nation generally gained or lost more by

the assimilation of North Africa, is less ascertained. The dislike

which the Italian felt from of old towards the African did not change

after Carthage had become a Roman great city, and all Africa spoke

Latin; if Severus Antoninus combined in himself the vices of three

nations, his savage cruelty was traced to his African father, and the

ship captain of the fourth century, who thought that “Africa was a

fine country but the Africans were not worthy of it, for they were

cunning and faithless, and there might be some good people among them,

but not many,” was at least not thinking of the bad Hannibal, but

was speaking out the feeling of the great public at the time. So far

as the influence of African elements may be recognised in the Roman

literature of the imperial period, we meet with specially unpleasant

leaves in a book generally far from pleasant. The new life, which

bloomed for the Romans out of the ruins of the nations extirpated by

them, was nowhere full and fresh and beautiful; even the two creations

of Caesar, the Celtic land and North Africa--for Latin Africa was not

much less his work than Latin Gaul--remained structures of ruins.

But the toga suited, at any rate, the new-Roman of the Rhone and the

Garonne better than the “Seminumidians and Semigaetulians.” Doubtless

Carthage remained in the numbers of its population and in wealth not

far behind Alexandria, and was indisputably the second city of the

Latin half of the empire, next to Rome the most lively, perhaps also

the most corrupt, city of the West, and the most important centre of

Latin culture and literature. Augustine depicts with lively colours how

many an honest youth from the province went to wreck there amid the

dissolute doings of the circus, and how powerful was the impression

produced on him--when, a student of seventeen years of age, he came

from Madaura to Carthage--by the theatre with its love-pieces and

with its tragedy. There was no lack in the African of diligence

and talent; on the contrary, perhaps more value was set upon the

Latin and along with it the Greek instruction, and on its aim of

general culture, in Africa than anywhere else in the empire, and the

school-system was highly developed. The philosopher Appuleius under

Pius, the celebrated Christian author Augustine, both descended from

good burgess-families--the former from Madaura, the latter from the

neighbouring smaller place Thagaste--received their first training in

the schools of their native towns; then Appuleius studied in Carthage,

and finished his training in Athens and Rome; Augustine went from

Thagaste first to Madaura, then likewise to Carthage; in this way the

training of youth was completed in the better houses throughout.

Juvenal advises the professor of rhetoric who would earn money to go

to Gaul or, still better, to Africa, “the nurse of advocates.” At a

nobleman’s seat in the territory of Cirta there has recently been

brought to light a private bath of the later imperial period equipped

with princely magnificence, the mosaic pavement of which depicts

how matters went on once at the castle; the palaces, the extensive

hunting-park with the hounds and stags, the stables with the noble

race-horses, occupy no doubt most of the space, but there is not

wanting also the “scholar’s corner” (_filosofi locus_), and beside it

the noble lady sitting under the palms.

[Sidenote: Scholasticism.]

But the black spot of the African literary character is just its

scholasticism. It does not begin till late; before the time of Hadrian

and of Pius the Latin literary world exhibits no African name of

repute, and subsequently the Africans of note were throughout, in the

first instance, schoolmasters, and came as such to be authors. Under

those emperors the most celebrated teachers and scholars of the capital

were native Africans, the rhetor Marcus Cornelius Fronto from Cirta,

instructor of the princes at the court of Pius, and the philologue

Gaius Sulpicius Apollinaris from Carthage. For that reason there

prevailed in these circles sometimes the foolish purism that forced

back the Latin into the old-fashioned paths of Ennius and of Cato,

whereby Fronto and Apollinaris made their repute, sometimes an utter

oblivion of the earnest austerity innate in Latin, and a frivolity

producing a worse imitation of bad Greek models, such as reaches its

culmination in the--in its time much admired--“Ass-romance” of that

philosopher of Madaura. The language swarmed partly with scholastic

reminiscences, partly with unclassical or newly coined words and

phrases. Just as in the emperor Severus, an African of good family and

himself a scholar and author, his tone of speech always betrayed the

African, so the style of these Africans, even those who were clever and

from the first trained in Latin, like the Carthaginian Tertullian, has

regularly something strange and incongruous, with its diffuseness of

petty detail, its minced sentences, its witty and fantastic conceits.

There is a lack of both the graceful charm of the Greek and of the

dignity of the Roman. Significantly we do not meet in the whole field

of Africano-Latin authorship a single poet who deserves to be so much

as named.

[Sidenote: Christian literature in Africa.]

It was not till the Christian period that it became otherwise. In

the development of Christianity Africa plays the very first part;

if it arose in Syria, it was in and through Africa that it became

the religion for the world. As the translation of the sacred books

from the Hebrew language into the Greek, and that into the popular

language of the most considerable Jewish community out of Judaea,

gave to Judaism its position in the world, so in a similar way for

the transference of Christianity from the serving East to the ruling

West the translation of its confessional writings into the language

of the West became of decisive importance; and this all the more,

inasmuch as these books were translated, not into the language of the

cultivated circles of the West, which early disappeared from common

life and in the imperial age was everywhere a matter of scholastic

attainment, but into the decomposed Latin already preparing the way

for the structure of the Romance languages--the Latin of common

intercourse at that time familiar to the great masses. If Christianity

was by the destruction of the Jewish church-state released from its

Jewish basis (p. 229), it became the religion of the world by the

fact, that in the great world-empire it began to speak the universally

current imperial language; and those nameless men, who since the

second century Latinised the Christian writings, performed for this

epoch just such a service, as at the present day, in the heightened

measure required by the enlarged horizon of the nations, is carried

out in the footsteps of Luther by the Bible Societies. And these men

were in part Italians, but above all Africans.[307] In Africa to all

appearance the knowledge of Greek, which is able to dispense with

translations, was far more seldom to be met with than at least in

Rome; and, on the other hand, the Oriental element, that preponderated

particularly in the early stages of Christianity, here found a readier

reception than in the other Latin-speaking lands of the West. Even as

regards the polemic literature called especially into existence by

the new faith, since the Roman church at this epoch belonged to the

Greek circle (p. 226), Africa took the lead in the Latin tongue. The

whole Christian authorship down to the end of this period is, so far

as it is Latin, African; Tertullian and Cyprian were from Carthage,

Arnobius from Sicca, Lactantius, and probably in like manner Minucius

Felix, were, in spite of their classic Latin, Africans, and not less

the already mentioned somewhat later Augustine. In Africa the growing

church found its most zealous confessors and its most gifted defenders.

For the literary conflict of the faith Africa furnished by far the

most and the ablest combatants, whose special characteristics, now in

eloquent discussion, now in witty ridicule of fables, now in vehement

indignation, found a true and mighty field for their display in the

onslaught on the old gods. A mind--intoxicated first by the whirl of

a dissolute life, and then by the fiery enthusiasm of faith--such

as utters itself in the Confessions of Augustine, has no parallel

elsewhere in antiquity.

APPENDIX: ROMAN BRITAIN

(Chapter V. Vol. I. pp. 170-194)

Mommsen’s sketch of Roman Britain has often been called deficient and

inaccurate. As a general judgment, this is wholly unjust. The sketch

has real and distinct merits. When first issued in 1885, it marked a

great advance towards a right conception of its subject. It differed

conspicuously, and all for the better, from the other sketches of Roman

Britain which were then current and accepted, Hübner’s papers since

collected in his _Römische Herrschaft in Westeuropa_, Wright’s _Celt,

Roman, and Saxon_, Scarth’s _Roman Britain_. To-day it is perhaps the

best existing account of the conquest and military administration of

the province, and it contains much which no one--least of all, our

English archaeologists--can afford to neglect. On the other hand, it

is undeniably not one of the best sections in the volume to which it

belongs, and it treats some parts of its theme, notably the civil life

and civilisation, very shortly. One may be pardoned for taking the

occasion of its republication in English dress, to make a few additions

and corrections which may interest English readers, while they fill

some gaps and take note of some recent discoveries.

The accounts of the Claudian invasion and the early years of the

conquest (pp. 172-9) are, in their broad outlines, beyond reasonable

doubt. But details can perhaps be added or altered. The army which

started in A.D. 43 in three corps (τριχῇ νεμηθέντες, Dio, 60, 20) may

well have landed in the three harbours afterwards used by the Romans in

Kent, Lymne, Dover, and Richborough--the last named being the principal

port for passengers to and from Britain throughout the Roman period.

The difficult river crossed shortly afterwards by Plautius may be the

Medway near Rochester, where in after years the Roman road from the

Kentish ports to London had its bridge. The subsequent course of the

invading armies is not easy to trace. But it would seem that, when

they had won London and Colchester, they advanced from this base-line

in three separate corps to the conquest of the South and Midlands.

The left wing, the Second Legion Augusta under Vespasian, overran the

south as far (probably) as South Wales and Exeter (Suet. _Vesp._ 4;

Tac. _Agric._ 13; _Hist._ iii. 44; tile of Legio ii. Aug. at Seaton,

_Archæological Journal_, xlix. 180). The centre, the Fourteenth and

Twentieth Legions, crossed the Midlands to Wroxeter and Chester (tile

of Legio xx. at Whittlebury, _Vict. Hist. of Northants_, i. 215;

inscriptions at Wroxeter and Chester). The right wing, the Ninth, moved

up the east side of Britain to Lincoln (tile of Legio ix. at Hilly

Wood, on the road towards Lincoln, _Vict. Hist. of Northants_, i. 214;

inscriptions at Lincoln). These three lines of advance led direct to

the positions of the fortresses where we find the legions presently

posted. They agree also with the three main groups of Roman roads which

radiate from London: (1) the south-west route to Silchester, and thence

by branches to Winchester, Exeter, Bath, South Wales; (2) the Midland

“Watling Street,” by St. Albans to Wroxeter and Chester; (3) the

eastern route to Colchester, Cambridge, and Castor near Peterborough,

to Lincoln.[308]

In any case there can be little doubt that by A.D. 47 or 48--within

four or five years of the first landing--the Roman troops had reached

the basins of the Humber and the Severn, as Mommsen observes (p. 176).

This much is plain from the fact that Ostorius, who came out in 47, had

at once to deal with the Iceni of Norfolk, the Decangi of Flintshire,

the Brigantes of Yorkshire, the Silures of Monmouthshire (Tac. _Ann._

xii. 31). But the difficult corruption of Tacitus (_ibid._), _cuncta

castris antonam et Sabrinam fluvios cohibere parat_, is probably to be

emended (with Dr. H. Bradley, _Academy_, April and May 1883) _cuncta

cis Trisantonam_, _i.e._ the Roman frontier at the moment was, roughly,

Severn and Trent. This is preferable both to Mommsen’s suggestion

(given above, p. 176 note) and to mine (_Journ. Phil._ xvii. 268).

The older and more violent remedy, _Avonam inter et Sabrinam_, though

revived in the text of the second edition of Furneaux’s _Tacitus_

(1907), is pretty certainly wrong; indeed, it is not Latin.

It would seem then that, by 47 or 48, practically the whole lowlands

were in the hands of the Romans. Whether Chester had already been

occupied or (as seems likelier) was first garrisoned when Ostorius

attacked the Decangi, must remain uncertain; it must in any case have

been occupied soon (_Eph. Epigr._ vii. 903; Domaszewski, _Rhein. Mus._

xlviii. 344). Caerleon, connected by Mommsen with Tac. _Ann._ xii. 32,

presents more difficulty, since it has yielded hardly any datable

remains earlier than about A.D. 70-80; however, no other site can be

suggested on our present evidence for the _hiberna_ of the Second

Legion Augusta before 70. Wroxeter rests its claim to a fortress on

two early inscriptions of Legio xiv. (_Vict. Hist. Shropshire_, i.

243, 244), and this may be adequate, though Domaszewski doubts it.

The course of Watling Street seems to show that Wroxeter was occupied

before the troops pushed on to Chester.

Mommsen’s account of the Boadicean revolt (pp. 179-181) is famous for

his denunciation of Tacitus as “the most unmilitary of all authors.”

It must be conceded that Tacitus is unmilitary--not so much because he

is condensed or discontinuous or ignorant of geography (E. G. Hardy,

_Journ. Phil._ xxxi. 123), as because he has a literary horror of

all technical detail, and desires to give the general effect of each

situation without distracting the reader by vexatious precision and

difficult _minutiae_. But in this case his narrative (_Ann._ xii. 32

foll.) is better than Mommsen (or indeed Domaszewski) allows. Paullinus

doubtless marched to London, as Horsley long ago observed, because it

lay on the road (Watling Street) from Chester to Colchester; that he

hurried on in front of his main forces is implied in the _iam_ at the

beginning of c. 34.

The conquest of Wales (p. 182) was completed, as Mommsen says, in the

decade A.D. 70-80. But his statements require some re-wording. Roman

remains are not “completely absent” in the interior; the continuance

of native resistance to Rome is very doubtful; the existence of

Celtic speech and nationality in Wales to-day is--in large part,

at least--due to a Celtic revival in the late fourth or the fifth

century, and to immigration of new Celtic elements at that time, and

cannot therefore be cited as here. So far as present evidence goes,

the district as a whole seems during the first, second, and third

centuries to have closely resembled the similar mountainous districts

of northern England, save only that the Welsh tribes never revolted

after A.D. 80, while the Brigantes gave trouble throughout the second

century. The same system of small auxiliary _castella_ was established

in Wales as in northern England. These forts are at present almost

wholly unexplored. But we can detect unquestionable examples at

Caerhun (Canovium, _Eph._ vii. 1099) and Carnarvon, in the north; at

Tommen-y-mur, Llanio-i-sa, and Caio, in the west; at Caergai (_Eph._

vii. 863), Castle Collen near Llandrindod (_ibid._ 862), Caersws in

the upper valley of the Severn, and the Gaer near Brecon, in the

interior; at Gelligaer (_Trans. Cardiff Nat. Soc._ xxxv. 1903), Merthyr

Tydfil, Cardiff, Abergavenny, Usk, in the south, besides others not

yet satisfactorily identified as military sites. Several of these

have yielded remains suggestive of the first century, and indeed of

the Flavian period. The only one as yet properly excavated, Gelligaer,

seems to have been occupied under the Flavians, and dismantled after

no very long occupation, probably early in the second century. Such

dismantlement suggests that the land was then growing less unquiet. But

Wales never reached any higher degree of Roman civilisation than the

north of England. Towns and country houses were always rare, and its

population lived mostly, it would seem, in primitive villages (_Arch.

Cambrensis_, 1907). Later on, in the fourth century, Celts began to

come in from Ireland, much as other barbarians entered other parts of

the Empire, but their dates and numbers are very little known; see my

_Romanisation of Roman Britain_, pp. 27 foll. and refs. there given.

The invasion of Caledonia (p. 183) by Agricola has been illustrated by

recent discoveries. As I have pointed out elsewhere, we have traces

of Agricola’s line of forts (Tac. _Agr._ 23) at Camelon (_Proc.

Soc. Antiq. Scotland_, xxxv. fig. 10) and Bar Hill (G. Macdonald,

_Roman Forts on the Bar Hill_, Glasgow, 1906). Farther north, near

the junction of the Tay and Isla, at Inchtuthill, in the policies of

Delvine, a large encampment of Roman type has yielded a few objects

datable to the Agricolan age (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._ xxxvi. pp.

237, 242), and may give a clue to the site of Mons Graupius. Farther

south, the large fort lately excavated by Mr. James Curle, at Newstead,

near Melrose (_C. I. L._ vii. 1080, 1081; _Scottish Hist. Review_,

1908), was certainly occupied in the Agricolan age. To this date, too,

may perhaps be assigned the siege works round the native fortress on

Birrenswark in Dumfriesshire, with their leaden sling-bullets (_Proc.

Soc. Antiq. Scot._ xxxiii. 198 foll.). Evidence that the Legio ii.

Adiutrix was then posted at Chester, probably forming a double-legion

fortress with Legio xx., was obtained in the excavations of 1890

(_Catal. of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester_ (1900), pp. 7 foll. and

Nos. 23-35). An inscription from Camelon with the letters MILITES

L·II·A·DIE may have been intended to refer to this legion, but is a

forgery (_Class. Review_, xix. 57). No trace of Agricolan or of Flavian

remains has yet been found on the line of Hadrian’s Wall, except at

two points, which, strictly speaking, are near but not on the wall,

Carlisle (Luguvallium), and Corbridge (Corstopitum), where the two

great north roads pass on towards Caledonia. For the influence of

continental frontier troubles on the British operations of Agricola see

also Ritterling, _Jahreshefte des österr. arch. Instituts_, vii. 26.

The years between the recall of Agricola and the building of Hadrian’s

Wall (roughly A.D. 85-120) are a historical blank. Even the position of

the northern frontier during these years is unknown. The Romans seem

to have soon withdrawn from the line of the Clyde and Forth (Macdonald,

_Bar Hill_, pp. 14, 15). Whether they also withdrew south of Cheviot is

not quite clear, in the present state of the Newstead excavations.

Hadrian’s Wall from Tyne to Solway (p. 186) has assumed a very

different historical appearance since Mommsen wrote his paragraphs on

it in 1885. Then, the theory of Hodgson and Bruce held the field--that

the stone wall which is still visible, and the double rampart and

ditch to the south of it (called by English antiquaries the “Vallum”),

were both Hadrian’s work, the wall for defence against Caledonia and

the “Vallum” for defence against stray foes from the south. This view

was accepted by Mommsen. But later excavation and observation have

shown that the “Vallum” cannot be regarded as a military work--though

it is certainly Roman and connected with the wall. Excavations have

also shown that the wall itself falls into two periods. At Birdoswald

(Amboglanna) there was first a wall of turf (_murus caespiticius_);

later, almost but not quite on the same line, came the wall of stone

and the fort of Amboglanna in its present form. Similarly at Chesters

(Cilurnum) two building periods are discernible; the character of the

first is obscure, but the stone wall and the fort of Cilurnum belong

unquestionably to the second (_Cumberland Arch. Soc._ xiv. 187, 415,

xv. 180, 347, xvi. 84; _Arch. Aeliana_, xxiii. 9). As our ancient

authorities persistently mention two wall-builders, Hadrian and

Severus, and as the earlier wall of turf can be assigned to no one but

Hadrian, it would seem that we may assume a first fortification of the

Tyne and Solway line in turf about A.D. 120, and a rebuilding in stone,

on almost exactly the same _tracé_, about A.D. 208 by Severus. The

“Vallum” seems to have been built in relation to one or the other--more

probably the earlier--of these stone walls, and may represent a civil

frontier contemporaneous with it (Mommsen, _Gesammelte Schriften_, v.

461; Pelham, _Trans. Cumberland Arch. Soc._ xiv. 175). The attempt

of Dr. E. Krueger (_Bonner Jahrbücher_, cx. 1-38) to show that the

“Vallum” is an earlier independent work, built by Hadrian, while the

turf and stone walls are post-Hadrianic, seems to me both unproven and

contradicted by recent excavations.

Mommsen’s account of the Wall of Pius between Forth and Clyde and of

the Roman occupation of Scotland also needs modification. Statistics

of coins found in Scotland (printed in _Antonine Wall Report_, 1899,

pp. 158 foll., confirmed by all later finds) show that the Romans

had retired south of Cheviot by about A.D. 180, and never reoccupied

the positions thus lost. The mass of inscriptions, to which Mommsen

alludes, also contains nothing later than the reign of Marcus. It

becomes, therefore, impossible to connect the Wall of Pius with the

literary evidence relating to wall-building by Severus. That evidence

must belong to the Tyne and Solway. The length which it assigns to the

wall, cxxxii. miles, suits the southern line best. The numeral in any

case needs emendation, but it is as easy to read lxxxii. as xxxii.,

and 82 Roman miles fit closer to the length of the southern line

(73-1/2 English miles) than do 32 Roman miles to the 36-1/2 English

miles of the northern wall. Our knowledge of the northern wall itself

and of forts either north of it, like Ardoch, or south, like Lyne and

Newstead, has been much widened by excavation, but the gain has been

rather to the archaeologist than to the pure historian.

In the later history of north Britain the chief recent addition has

been evidence of a serious rising about A.D. 158, which perhaps covered

all the land of the Brigantes from Derbyshire to Dumfriesshire.

Inscriptions found at Birrens, at Netherby between Birrens and

Carlisle, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and at Brough in north Derbyshire,

mention a governor Iulius Verus as then specially active, and special

reinforcements as then arriving from Germany (_Proc. Soc. Antiq.

Scot._ xxxviii. 454). It is natural to connect these with the words

of Pausanias (cited on p. 188, note 2), and the connection had the

approval of Mommsen. For the division of the province into two by

Severus see Domaszewski, _Rangordnung_, p. 173. The boundary between

the two provinces is unknown; perhaps a line from the Humber to the

Mersey is not altogether improbable. Nor is there evidence to show how

long the division lasted.

Of the civil life and Romanisation of Britain (pp. 191-4) I have

written somewhat fully in a paper on _The Romanisation of Roman

Britain_. Here I may indicate some points. Mommsen’s view that the

cantonal system adopted in Gaul was dropped in Britain is opposed by

an inscription found at Caerwent in 1903, which records the erection

of a monument by the canton of the Silures after a decree of the local

senate--_ex decreto ordinis respublica civitatis Silurum_ (_Athenaeum_,

Sept. 26, 1903; _Archaeologia_, lix. 290); other inscriptions, if less

decisive, suggest that the case of the Silures was not unique in the

province. Indeed, a list of the cantonal capitals, and therefore

of the cantons, seems to survive mutilated in the _Ravennas_ (ed.

Parthey and Pinder, pp. 425 foll.). There we meet, besides three

municipalities carefully so labelled, nine or ten towns with tribal

affixes--Isca Dumnoniorum, Exeter; Venta Belgarum, Winchester;

Venta Silurum, Caerwent; Corinium Dobunorum, Cirencester; Calleva

Atrebatum, Silchester; Durovernum Cantiacorum, Canterbury; Viroconium

Cornoviorum, Wroxeter; Ratae Coritanorum, Leicester; Venta Icenorum,

Caistor-by-Norwich--and perhaps Noviomagus Regentium, Chichester.

Add to these Isurium Brigantum, known otherwise by this title, and

Dorchester in Dorset, and there emerges a fairly complete list of

just those towns which are declared by their remains to have been the

chief “country towns” of Roman Britain. The reasons why so little is

heard of the cantons are, I think, plain. They were smaller, poorer,

and less important than those of Gaul--as, indeed, a comparison of

the town-remains shows; there was, further, no British literature to

mention them; and, lastly, they quickly fell before the barbarians in

the fifth century.

The town-life of Roman Britain (p. 192) was somewhat more extensive

than Mommsen allows. There were four _coloniae_--Colchester or

_Camulodunum_, founded about A.D. 48 (Tac. _Ann._ xii. 32); Lincoln,

_Lindum_, established after the transference of the Ninth Legion to

York, probably in the late first century; Gloucester or _Glevum_,

founded A.D. 96-98 (_C. I. L._ vi. 3346); York or _Eburacum_, planted

at an unknown date, on the opposite bank of the Ouse to the legionary

fortress; and one _municipium_, Verulamium, outside St. Albans,

founded before A.D. 60. There were also about a dozen “country towns,”

already enumerated in the last paragraph. These were for the most

part not large villages, but actual towns, furnished with temples,

_fora_, houses, and street plans of Roman fashion, and inhabited, so

far as our scanty evidence goes, by populations of which both upper

and lower classes spoke and wrote Latin. At Bath, _Aquae Sulis_, were

well-built baths, and a stately temple of the goddess of the waters.

At London, _Londinium_ (later _Augusta_), was a prosperous and wealthy

trading-centre. But London was the only town of real size or splendour.

The rest, like the cantons mentioned above, were small and unimportant

as compared with similar towns elsewhere, and though it is not strictly

true that Gloucester and Verulam have produced no inscriptions (p. 193;

_Eph. Epigr._ iv. p. 195), the epigraphic yield has been scanty in

every town except perhaps York.

The roads of the province (p. 192) are numerous, though fewer than our

English antiquaries sometimes suppose. Those in the south, as Mommsen

rightly saw, radiate from London: see p. 192 above. The northern

military district is traversed by three main routes. One runs up the

west coast to the Solway and Carlisle. A second runs through the east

of the island, from York to Corbridge and to various points on the

eastern part of Hadrian’s Wall. The third, diverging from the second,

crossed the Yorkshire and Westmorland hills and thus reached Carlisle.

From Corbridge and Carlisle roads ran on northwards, and the eastern,

if not the western, of these gave access to the Wall of Pius. The Roman

roads of Wales are still imperfectly known, but there was a road from

Chester to Carnarvon, another from Caerleon past Neath to Carmarthen,

and a third joined the western parts of these two, while others

connected the forts in the interior.

More doubt surrounds the Romanisation of the province. Vinogradoff

(_Growth of the Manor_, p. 83) thinks that the Roman civilisation

spread like a river with many channels which traverse a wide area,

but only affect the immediate neighbourhood of their banks. I agree

rather with Mommsen’s conclusion (pp. 193, 194)--though the real

difference between the two writers is not so very great. The towns,

both municipalities and “country towns,” seem to have been thoroughly

Romanised. The numerous farms and country-houses (often styled

“villas”) are also in nearly every respect Roman, and the very scanty

evidence which we possess as to the language used in them favours

the idea that it was Latin. Even the villages, such as Pitt-Rivers

excavated (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, etc., 1887-98), show

little survival of native culture. It is to be noted, too, that Celtic

inscriptions of Roman date, such as occur occasionally in Gaul (Rhys,

_Proc. British Acad._ ii. 275 foll.), are wholly wanting in Britain.

Probably, therefore, Roman civilisation came to predominate throughout

the lowlands, though not in its more elaborate and splendid forms.

There were, however, thinly populated areas where we can trace hardly

any population of any sort, Romanised or other, as, for example, the

Weald of Kent and Sussex, and a large part of the Midlands (_Vict.

Hist. of Warwickshire_, i. 228), while the Cornish, Welsh, and northern

hills seem never to have admitted very much Romanisation outside the

forts which garrisoned parts of them. The analogies of other western

provinces, of Gaul (above, vol. i. p. 101) and Africa (ii. 328),

suggest that Celtic speech may have lingered on in such districts for

centuries, though not as an element hostile to the Roman; it is also

quite probable that Celtic private law and custom survived beside the

Roman (L. Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_, p. 8). But we have no

distinct evidence of either fact.

The spellings Ordovici (p. 182 and map) and Cartimandus (pp. 182, 183)

are Mommsen’s own choice.

[Illustration: SYRIEN UND MESOPOTAMIEN.]

[Illustration: AEGYPTEN.

_Moderne Namen in_ rückliegender Schrift

Mommsen Röm. Gesch. V. X.

H.K. 1884.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The conception that the Roman and the Parthian empires were

two great states standing side by side, and indeed the only ones

in existence, dominated the whole Roman East, particularly the

frontier-provinces. It meets us palpably in the Apocalypse of John, in

which there is a juxtaposition as well of the rider on the white horse

with the bow and of the rider on the red horse with the sword (vi. 2,

3) as of the Megistanes and the Chiliarchs (vi. 15, comp. xviii. 23,

xix. 18). The closing catastrophe, too, is conceived as a subduing of

the Romans by the Parthians bringing back the emperor Nero (ix. 14,

xvi. 12) and Armageddon, whatever may be meant by it, as the rendezvous

of the Orientals for the collective attack on the West. Certainly the

author, writing in the Roman empire, hints these far from patriotic

hopes more than he expresses them.

[2] This holds true even in some measure for the chronology. The

official historiography of the Sassanids reduces the space between the

last Darius and the first Sassanid from 558 to 266 years (Nöldeke,

_Tabari_, p. 1).

[3] The viceroys of Persis are called in their title constantly “Zag

Alohin” (at least the Aramaean signs correspond to these words, which

were presumably in pronunciation expressed in the Persian way), son

of God (Mordtmann, _Zeitschrift für Numismatik_, iv. 155 f.), and

to this corresponds the title θεοπάτωρ on the Greek coins of the

great-kings. The designation “God” is also found, as with the Seleucids

and the Sassanids.--Why a double diadem is attributed to the Arsacids

(Herodian, vi. 2, 1) is not cleared up.

[4] Τῶν Παρθυαίων συνέδριόν φησιν (Ποσειδώνιος) εἶναι, says Strabo, xi.

9, 3, p. 515, διττόν, τὸ μὲν συγγενῶν, τὸ δὲ σοφῶν καὶ μάγων, ἐξ ὧν

ἀμφοῖν τοὺς βασιλεῖς καθίστασθαι (καθίστησιν in MSS.); Justinus, xvii.

3, 1, _Mithridates rex Parthorum ... propter crudelitatem a senatu

Parthico regno pellitur_.

[5] In Egypt, whose court ceremonial, as doubtless that of all the

states of the Diadochi, is based on that ordained by Alexander, and in

so far upon that of the Persian empire, the like title seems to have

been conferred also personally (Franz, _C. I. Gr._ iii. 270). That the

same occurred with the Arsacids, is possible. Among the Greek-speaking

subjects of the Arsacid state the appellation μεγιστᾶνες seems in the

original stricter use to denote the members of the seven houses; it

is worthy of notice that _megistanes_ and _satrapae_ are associated

(Seneca, _Ep._ 21; Josephus, _Arch._ xi. 3, 2; xx. 2, 3). The

circumstance that in court mourning the Persian king does not invite

the _megistanes_ to table (Suetonius, _Gai._ 5) suggests the conjecture

that they had the privilege of taking meals with him. The title τῶν

πρώτων φίλων is also found among the Arsacids just as at the Egyptian

and Pontic courts (_Bull. de corr. Hell._ vii. p. 349).

[6] A royal cup-bearer, who is at the same time general, is mentioned

in Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 13, 7 = _Bell. Jud._ i. 13, 1. Similar court

offices are of frequent occurrence in the states of the Diadochi.

[7] Tacitus, _Ann._ xv. 2, 31. If, according to the preface of

Agathangelos (p. 109, Langlois), at the time of the Arsacids the oldest

and ablest prince bore rule over the country, and the three standing

next to him were kings of the Armenians, of the Indians, and of the

Massagetae, there is here perhaps at bottom the same arrangement. That

the Partho-Indian empire, if it was combined with the main land, was

likewise regarded as an appanage for the second son, is very probable.

[8] These are doubtless meant by Justinus (xli. 2, 2), _proximus

maiestati regum praepositorum ordo est; ex hoc duces in bello, ex hoc

in pace rectores habent_. The native name is preserved by the gloss in

Hesychius, βίσταξ ὁ βασιλεὺς παρὰ Πέρσαις. If in Ammianus, xxiii. 6,

14, the presidents of the Persian _regiones_ are called _vitaxae_ (read

_vistaxae_), _id est magistri equitum et reges et satrapae_, he has

awkwardly referred what is Persian to all Inner Asia (comp. _Hermes_,

xvi. 613); we may add that the designation “leaders of horsemen”

for these viceroys may relate to the fact that they, like the Roman

governors, united in themselves the highest civil and the supreme

military power, and the army of the Parthians consisted preponderantly

of cavalry.

[9] This we learn from the title σατράπης τῶν σατραπῶν, attributed to

one Gotarzes in the inscription of Kermanschahân in Kurdistan (_C.

I. Gr._ 4674). It cannot be assigned to the Arsacid king of the same

name as such; but perhaps there may be designated by it, as Olshausen

(_Monatsbericht der Berliner Akademie_, 1878, p. 179) conjectures,

that position which belonged to him after his renouncing of the

great-kingdom (Tacitus, _Ann._ xi. 9).

[10] Still later a troop of horse in the Parthian army is called that

“of the free:” Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 13, 5 = _Bell. Jud._ i. 13, 3.

[11] The oldest known coin with Pahlavi writing was struck in

Claudius’s time under Vologasus I.; it is bilingual, and gives to the

king in Greek his full title, but only the name Arsaces, in Iranian

merely the native individual name shortened (_Vol._).

[12] Usually this is restricted to the large silver money, and the

small silver and most of the copper are regarded as of royal coinage.

But by this view a singular secondary part in coinage is assigned to

the great-king. More correctly perhaps the former coinage is conceived

of as predominantly destined for dealings abroad, the latter as

predominantly for internal intercourse; the diversities subsisting

between the two kinds are also explained in this way.

[13] The first ruler that bears it is Phraapates about 188 B.C. (Percy

Gardner, _Parthian Coinage_, p. 27).

[14] Thus there stands on the coins of Gotarzes (under Claudius)

Γωτέρζης βασιλεὺς βασιλέων ὑὸς κεκαλουμένος Ἀρταβάνου. On the later

ones the Greek legend is often quite unintelligible.

[15] While the kingdom of Darius, according to his inscriptions,

includes in it the Gādara (the Gandhâra of the Indians, Γανδαρῖτις

of the Greeks on the Cabul river) and the Hîdu (the dwellers by the

Indus), the former are in one of the inscriptions of Asoka adduced

among his subjects, and a copy of his great edict has been found in

Kapurdi Giri, or rather in Shahbaz Garhi (Yusufzai-district), nearly

27 miles north-west of the point where the Cabul river falls into

the Indus at Attock. The seat of the government of these north-west

provinces of Asoka’s kingdom was (according to the inscription _C.

I. Indicar._ i. p. 91) Takkhasilâ, Τάξιλα of the Greeks, some 40

miles E.S.E. of Attock, the seat of government for the south-western

provinces was Ujjênî (Ὀζήνη). The eastern part of the Cabul valley thus

belonged at any rate to Asoka’s empire. It is not quite impossible

that the Khyber pass formed the boundary; but probably the whole Cabul

valley belonged to India, and the boundary to the south of Cabul was

formed by the sharp line of the Suleiman range, and farther to the

south-west by the Bolan pass. Of the later Indo-Scythian king Huvishka

(Ooerke of the coins), who seems to have resided on the Yamunâ in

Mathurâ, an inscription has been found at Wardak not far northward from

Cabul (according to information from Oldenberg).

[16] The Egyptian merchant named in note 3 makes mention, c. 47, of

“the warlike people of the Bactrians, who have their own king.” At

that time, therefore, Bactria was separated from the Indus-empire that

was under Parthian princes. Strabo, too (xi. 11, 1, p. 516) treats the

Bactro-Indian empire as belonging to the past.

[17] Probably he is the Kaspar--in older tradition Gathaspar--who

appears among the holy three kings from the East (Gutschmid, _Rhein.

Mus._ xix. 162).

[18] The most definite testimony to the Parthian rule in these regions

is found in the description of the coasts of the Red Sea drawn up by

an Egyptian merchant under Vespasian, c. 38: “Behind the mouth of the

Indus in the interior lies the capital of Scythia Minnagara; but this

is ruled by the Parthians, who constantly chase away one another”

(ὑπὸ Πάρθων συνεχῶς ἀλλήλους ἐνδιωκόντων). The same is repeated in a

somewhat confused way, c. 41; it might here appear as if Minnagara lay

in India itself above Barygaza, and Ptolemy has already been led astray

by this; but certainly the writer, who speaks as to the interior only

from hearsay, has only wished to say that a large town Minnagara lay

inland not far from Barygaza, and much cotton was brought thence to

Barygaza. The numerous traces also of Alexander, which occur according

to the same authority in Minnagara, can be found only on the Indus,

not in Gujerat. The position of Minnagara on the lower Indus not far

from Hyderabad, and the existence of a Parthian rule there under

Vespasian, appear hereby assured.--With this we may be allowed to

combine the coins of king Gondopharus or Hyndopherres, who in a very

old Christian legend is converted to Christianity by St. Thomas, the

apostle of the Parthians and Indians, and in fact appears to belong

to the first period of the Roman empire (Sallet, _Num. Zeitschr._ vi.

355; Gutschmid, _Rhein. Mus._ xix. 162); of his brother’s son Abdagases

(Sallet, _ib._ p. 365), who may be identical with the Parthian prince

of this name in Tacitus, _Ann._ vi. 36, at any rate bears a Parthian

name; and lastly of king Sanabarus, who must have reigned shortly after

Hyndopherres, perhaps was his successor. Here belongs also a number

of other coins marked with Parthian names, Arsaces, Pacorus, Vonones.

This coinage attaches itself decidedly to that of the Arsacids (Sallet,

_ib._ p. 277); the silver pieces of Gondopharus and of Sanabarus--of

the others the coins are almost solely copper--correspond exactly to

the Arsacid drachmae. To all appearance these belong to the Parthian

princes of Minnagara; the appearance here of Indian legend alongside of

the Greek, as of Pahlavi writing among the late Arsacids, suits this

view. These, however, are not coins of satraps, but, as the Egyptian

indicates, of great-kings rivalling those of Ctesiphon; Hyndopherres

names himself in very corrupt Greek βασιλεὺς βασιλέων μέγας ἀυτόκρατωρ,

and in good Indian “Maharajah Rajadi Rajah.” If, as is not improbable,

under the Mambaros or Akabaros, whom the Periplus, c. 41, 52,

designates as ruler of the coast of Barygaza, there lurks the Sanabarus

of the coins, the latter belongs to the time of Nero or Vespasian, and

ruled not merely at the mouths of the Indus, but also over Gujerat.

Moreover, if an inscription found not far from Peshawur is rightly

referred to king Gondopharus, his rule must have extended up thither,

probably as far as Cabul.--The fact that Corbulo in the year 60 sent

the embassy of the Hyrcanians who had revolted from the Parthians--in

order that they might not be intercepted by the latter--to the coast of

the Red Sea, whence they might reach their home without setting foot

on Parthian territory (Tacitus, _Ann._ xv. 25), tells in favour of the

view that the Indus valley at that time was not subject to the ruler of

Ctesiphon.

[19] That the great kingdom of the Arsacids of Minnagara did not

subsist much beyond the time of Nero, is probable from the coins.

It is questionable what rulers followed them. The Bactro-Indian

rulers of Greek names belong predominantly, perhaps all of them, to

the pre-Augustan epoch; and various indigenous names, _e.g._ Maues

and Azes, fall in point of language and writing (_e.g._ the form of

the ω Ω) before this time. On the other hand the coins of the kings

Kozulokadphises and Oemokadphises, and those of the Sacian kings,

Kanerku and his successors, while all are clearly characterised as

belonging to one coinage by the gold stater of the weight of the Roman

aureus, which does not previously occur in the Indian coinage, are

to all appearance later than Gondopharus and Sanabarus. They show

how the state of the Indus valley assumed a national Indian type in

ever increasing measure in contrast to the Hellenes as well as to the

Iranians. The reign of these Kadphises will thus fall between the

Indo-Parthian rulers and the dynasty of the Sacae, which latter begins

with A.D. 78 (Oldenberg, in Sallet’s _Zeitschr. für Num._ viii. 292).

Coins of these Sacian kings, found in the treasure of Peshawur, name

in a remarkable way Greek gods in a mutilated form, Ηρακιλο, Σαραπο,

alongside of the national Βουδο. The latest of their coins show the

influence of the oldest Sassanid coinage, and might belong to the

second half of the third century (Sallet, _Zeitschr. für Num._ vi. 224).

[20] The Indo-Greek and the Indo-Parthian rulers, just as the

Kadphises, make use on their coins to a large extent of the indigenous

Indian language and writing alongside of the Greek: the Sacian kings

on the other hand never used the Indian language and Indian alphabet,

but employ exclusively the Greek letters, and the non-Greek legends of

their coins are beyond doubt Scythian. Thus on Kanerku’s gold pieces

there sometimes stands βασιλεὺς βασιλέων Κανήρκου, sometimes ραο

νανοραο κανηρκι κορανο, where the first two words must be a Scythian

form of the Indian Rajâdi Rajah, and the two following contain the

personal and the family name (Gushana) of the king (Oldenberg, _l. c._

p. 294). Thus these Sacae were foreign rulers in India in another sense

than the Bactrian Hellenes and the Parthians. Yet the inscriptions set

up under them in India are not Scythian but Indian.

[21] Arrian, who, as governor of Cappadocia, had himself wielded

command over the Armenians (_contra Al._ 29), always in the _Tactica_

names the Armenians and Parthians together (4, 3, 44, 1, as respects

the heavy cavalry, the mailed κοντοφόροι and the light cavalry, the

ἀκροβολισταί or ἱπποτοξόται; 34, 7 as respects the wide hose); and,

where he speaks of Hadrian’s introduction of barbaric cavalry into the

Roman army, he traces the mounted archers back to the model of “the

Parthians or Armenians” (44, 1).

[22] Caesar’s illegitimate son Πτολεμαῖος ὁ καὶ Καῖσαρ θεὸς φιλοπάτωρ

φιλομήτωρ, as his royal designation runs (_C. I. Gr. 4717_), entered

on the joint rule of Egypt in the Egyptian year 29 Aug. 711/2, as the

era shows (Wescher, _Bullet. dell’ Inst._ 1866, p. 199; Krall, _Wiener

Studien_, v. 313). As he came in place of Ptolemaeus the younger, the

husband and brother of his mother, the setting aside of the latter by

Cleopatra, of which the particulars are not known, must have taken

place just then, and have furnished the occasion to proclaim him as

king of Egypt. Dio also, xlvii. 31, places his nomination in the summer

of 712 {42 B.C.} before the battle of Philippi. It was thus not the

work of Antonius, but sanctioned by the two rulers in concert at a time

when it could not but be their object to meet the wishes of the queen

of Egypt, who certainly had from the outset ranged herself on their

side.

[23] This is what Augustus means when he says that he had brought again

to the empire the provinces of the East in great part distributed among

kings (_Mon. Ancyr._ 5, 41: _provincias omnis, quae trans Hadrianum

mare vergunt ad orientem, Cyrenasque, iam ex parte magna regibus eas

possidentibus ... reciperavi_).

[24] The decorum, which was as characteristic of Augustus as its

opposite was of his colleague, did not fail him here. Not merely in

the case of Caesarion was the paternity, which the dictator himself

had virtually acknowledged, afterwards officially denied; the children

also of Antonius by Cleopatra, where indeed nothing was to be denied,

were regarded doubtless as members of the imperial house, but were

never formally acknowledged as children of Antonius. On the contrary

the son of the daughter of Antonius by Cleopatra, the subsequent king

of Mauretania Ptolemaeus, is called in the Athenian inscription,

_C. I. A._ iii. 555, grandson of Ptolemaeus; for Πτολεμαίου ἔκγονος

cannot well in this connection be taken otherwise. This maternal

grandfather was invented in Rome, that they might be able officially

to conceal the real one. Any one who prefers--as O. Hirschfeld

proposes--to take ἔκγονος as great-grandson, and to refer it to the

maternal great-grandfather, comes to the same result; for then the

grandfather is passed over, because the mother was in the legal sense

fatherless.--Whether the fiction, which is in my view more probable,

went so far as to indicate a definite Ptolemaeus, possibly to prolong

the life of the last Lagid who died in 712 {42 B.C.}, or whether they

were content with inventing a father without entering into particulars,

cannot be decided. But the fiction was adhered to in this respect, that

the son of Antonius’s daughter obtained the name of the fictitious

grandfather. The circumstance that in this case preference was given to

the descent from the Lagids over that from Massinissa may probably have

been occasioned more by regard to the imperial house, which treated the

illegitimate child as belonging to it, than by the Hellenic inclination

of the father.

[25] It is in itself credible that Antonius concealed the impending

invasion from Phraates as long as possible, and therefore, when sending

back Monaeses, declared himself ready to conclude peace on the basis

of the restitution of the lost standards (Plutarch, 37; Dio, xlix. 24;

Florus, ii. 20 [iv. 10]). But he knew presumably that this offer would

not be accepted, and in no case can he have been in earnest with those

proposals; beyond doubt he wished for the war and the overthrow of

Phraates.

[26] The account of the matter given by Strabo, xi. 13, 4, p. 524,

evidently after the description of this war compiled by Antonius’s

comrade in arms Dellius, and, it may be conjectured, at his bidding

(comp. _ib._ xi. 13, 3; Dio, xlix. 39), is a very sorry attempt to

justify the beaten general. If Antonius did not take the nearest route

to Ctesiphon, king Artavazdes cannot be brought in for the blame of

it as a false guide; it was a military, and doubtless still more a

political, miscalculation of the general in chief.

[27] The fact of the deposition and execution, and the time, are

attested by Dio, xlix. 32, and Valerius Maximus, ix. 15, ext. 2; the

cause or the pretext must have been connected with the Armenian war.

[28] The account of the seizure of Armenia is wanting, but the fact

is clearly apparent from Tacitus, _Ann._ xi. 9. To this connection

probably belongs what Josephus, _Arch._ xx. 3, 3, tells of the design

of the successor of Artabanus to wage war against the Romans, from

which Izates the satrap of Adiabene vainly dissuades him. Josephus

names this successor, probably in error, Bardanes. The immediate

successor of Artabanus III. was, according to Tacitus, _Ann._ xi. 8,

his son of the same name, whom along with his son thereupon Gotarzes

put out of the way; and this Artabanus IV. must be here meant.

[29] The statement of Petrus Patricius (_fr._ 3 Müll.) that king

Mithradates of Iberia had planned revolt from Rome, but in order to

preserve the semblance of fidelity, had sent his brother Cotys to

Claudius, and then, when the latter had given information to the

emperor of those intrigues, had been deposed and replaced by his

brother, is not compatible with the assured fact that in Iberia, at

least from the year 35 (Tacitus, _Ann._ vi. 32) till the year 60

(Tacitus, _Ann._ xiv. 26), Pharasmanes, and in the year 75 his son

Mithradates (_C. I. L._ iii. 6052) bore rule. Beyond doubt Petrus has

confused Mithradates of Iberia and the king of the Bosporus of the same

name (I. 316, note 1), and here at the bottom lies the narrative, which

Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 18, presupposes.

[30] If the coins, which, it is true, for the most part admit of being

distinguished only by resemblance of effigy, are correctly attributed,

those of Gotarzes reach to Sel. 362 Daesius = A.D. 51 June, and

those of Vologasus (we know none of Vonones II.) begin with Sel. 362

Gorpiaeus = A.D. 51 Sept. (Percy Gardner, _Parthian Coinage_, pp. 50,

51), which agrees with Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 14, 44.

[31] Gorneae, called by the Armenians _Garhni_, as the ruins (nearly

east of Erivân) are still at present named. (Kiepert.)

[32] Even after the attack Tiridates complained _cur datis nuper

obsidibus redintegrataque amicitia ... vetere Armeniae possessione

depelleretur_, and Corbulo presented to him, in case of his turning

as a suppliant to the emperor, the prospect of a _regnum stabile_

(Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 37). Elsewhere too the refusal of the oath of

fealty is indicated as the proper ground of war (Tacitus, _Ann._ xii.

34).

[33] The report in Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 34-41, embraces beyond doubt

the campaigns of 58 and 59, since Tacitus under the year 59 is silent

as to the Armenian campaign, while under the year 60, _Ann._ xiv. 23

joins on immediately to xiii. 41, and evidently describes merely a

single campaign; generally, where he condenses in this way, he as a

rule anticipates. That the war cannot have begun only in 59, is further

confirmed by the fact that Corbulo observed the solar eclipse of 30th

April 59 on Armenian soil (Plin. _H. N._ ii. 70, 180); had he not

entered the country till 59, he could hardly have crossed the enemy’s

frontier so early in the year. The narrative of Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii,

34-41, does not in itself show an intercalation of a year, but with his

mode of narrating it admits the possibility that the first year was

spent in the crossing of the Euphrates and the settling in Armenia, and

so the winter mentioned in _c._ 35 is that of the year 58-9, especially

as in view of the character of the army such a beginning to the war

would be quite in place, and in view of the short Armenian summer

it was militarily convenient thus to separate the marching into the

country and the conduct proper of the war.

[34] From the representation of Tacitus, _Ann._ xv. 6, the partiality

and the perplexity are clearly seen. He does not venture to express the

surrender of Armenia to Tiridates, and only leaves the reader to infer

it.

[35] This is said by Tacitus himself, _Ann._ xv. 10: _nec a Corbulone

properatum, quo gliscentibus periculis etiam subsidii laus augeretur_,

in naive unconcern at the severe censure which this praise involves.

How partial is the tone of the whole account resting on Corbulo’s

despatches, is shown among other things by the circumstance that

Paetus is reproached in one breath with the inadequate provisioning

of the camp (xv. 8) and with the surrender of it in spite of copious

supplies (xv. 16), and the latter fact is inferred from this, that

the retiring Romans preferred to destroy the stores which, according

to the capitulation, were to be delivered to the Parthians. As the

exasperation against Tiberius found its expression in the painting of

Germanicus in fine colours, so did the exasperation against Nero in the

picture of Corbulo.

[36] The statement of Corbulo that Paetus bound himself on oath in

presence of his soldiers and of the Parthian deputies to send no troops

to Armenia till the arrival of Nero’s answer, is declared by Tacitus,

_Ann._ xv. 16, unworthy of credit; it is in keeping with the state of

the case, and nothing was done to the contrary.

[37] As, according to Tacitus, _Ann._ xv. 25 (comp. Dio, lxii. 22),

Nero dismissed graciously the envoys of Vologasus, and allowed them

to see the possibility of an understanding if Tiridates appeared

in person, Corbulo may in this case have acted according to his

instructions; but this was rather perhaps one of the turns added in the

interest of Corbulo. That these events were brought under discussion

in the trial to which he was subjected some years after, is probable

from the statement that one of the officers of the Armenian campaign

became his accuser. The identity of the cohort-prefect, Arrius Varus,

in Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 9, and of the primipilus, _Hist._ iii. 6, has

been without reason disputed; comp. on _C. I. L._ v. 867.

[38] In Ziata (Charput) there have been found two inscriptions of a

fort, which one of the legions led by Corbulo over the Euphrates, the

3d Gallica, constructed there by Corbulo’s orders in the year 64 (_Eph.

epigr._ v. p. 25).

[39] Nero intended _inter reliqua bella_, an Ethiopian one (Plin. vi.

29, comp. 184). To this the sending of troops to Alexandria (Tacitus,

_Hist._ i. 31, 70) had reference.

[40] As the aim of the expedition both Tacitus, _Hist._ i. 6, and

Suetonius, _Ner._ 19, indicate the Caspian gates, _i.e._ the pass

of the Caucasus between Tiflis and Vladi-Kavkas at Darial, which,

according to the legend, Alexander closed with iron gates (Plin. _H.

N._ vi. 11, 30; Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ vii. 7, 4; Procopius, _Pers._

i. 10). Both from this locality and from the whole scheme of the

expedition it cannot possibly have been directed against the Albani

on the western shore of the Caspian Sea; here, as well as at another

passage (_Ann._ ii. 68, _ad Armenios, inde Albanos Heniochosque_), only

the Alani can be meant, who in Josephus, _l. c._ and elsewhere appear

just at this spot and are frequently confounded with the Caucasian

Albani. No doubt the account of Josephus is also confused. If here the

Albani, with consent of the king of the Hyrcanians, invade Media and

then Armenia through the Caspian gates, the writer has been thinking

of the other Caspian gate eastward from Rhagae; but this must be his

mistake, since the latter pass, situated in the heart of the Parthian

kingdom, cannot possibly have been the aim of the Neronian expedition,

and the Alani had their seats not on the eastern shore of the Caspian

but to the north of the Caucasus. On account of this expedition the

best of the Roman legions, the 14th, was recalled from Britain,

although it went only as far as Pannonia (Tacitus, _Hist._ ii. 11,

comp. 27, 66), and a new legion, the 1st Italic, was formed by Nero

(Suetonius, _Ner._ 19). One sees from this what was the scale on which

the project was conceived.

[41] In what connection he refused to Vespasian the title of emperor

(Dio, lxvi. 11) is not clear; possibly immediately after his

insurrection, before he had perceived that the Flavians were the

stronger. His intercession for the princes of Commagene (Josephus,

_Bell. Jud._ vii. 7, 3) was attended by success, and so was purely

personal, by no means a protest against the conversion of the kingdom

into a province.

[42] The four Syrian legions were the 3d _Gallica_, the 6th _ferrata_

(both hitherto in Syria), the 4th _Scythica_ (hitherto in Moesia, but

having already taken part in the Parthian as in the Jewish war), and

the 16th _Flavia_ (new). The one legion of Palestine was the 10th

_fretensis_ (hitherto in Syria). The two of Cappadocia were the 12th

_fulminata_ (hitherto in Syria, moved by Titus to Melitene, Josephus,

_Bell. Jud._ vii. 1, 3), and the 15th _Apollinaris_ (hitherto in

Pannonia, but having taken part, like the 4th _Scythica_, in the

Parthian as in the Jewish war). The garrisons were thus changed as

little as possible, only two of the legions already called earlier to

Syria received fixed stations there, and one newly instituted was moved

thither.--After the Jewish war under Hadrian the 6th _ferrata_ was

despatched from Syria to Palestine.

[43] At this time (comp. _C. I. L._ v. 6988), probably falls also the

Cappadocian governorship of C. Rutilius Gallicus, of which it is said

(Statius, i. 4, 78): _hunc ... timuit ... Armenia et patiens Latii

iam pontis Araxes_, with reference presumably to a bridge-structure

executed by this Roman garrison. That Gallicus served under Corbulo, is

from the silence of Tacitus not probable.

[44] That war threatened to break out under Vespasian in the year 75 on

the Euphrates, while M. Ulpius Trajanus, the father of the emperor, was

governor of Syria, is stated by Pliny in his panegyric on the son, c.

14, probably with strong exaggeration; the cause is unknown.

[45] There are coins dated, and provided with the individual names

of the kings, of (V)ologasus from the years 389 and 390 = 77-78; of

Pacorus from the years 389-394 = 77-82 (and again 404-407 = 92-95);

of Artabanus from the year 392 = 80-1. The corresponding historical

dates are lost, with the exception of the notice connecting Titus and

Artabanus in Zonaras, xi. 18 (comp. Suetonius, _Ner._ 57; Tacitus,

_Hist._ i. 2), but the coins point to an epoch of rapid changes on the

throne, and, apparently, of simultaneous coinage by rival pretenders.

[46] This is proved by the detached notice from Arrian in Suidas

(_s. v._ ἐπίκλημα): ὁ δὲ Πάκορος ὁ Παρθυαίων βασιλεὺς καὶ ἄλλα τινὰ

ἐπικλήματα ἐπέφερε Τραιανῷ τῷ βασιλεῖ, and by the attention which

is devoted in Pliny’s report to the emperor, written about the year

112 (_ad Trai._ 74), to the relations between Pacorus and the Dacian

king Decebalus. The time of the reign of this Parthian king cannot be

sufficiently fixed. There are no Parthian coins with the king’s name

from the whole period of Trajan; the coining of silver seems to have

been in abeyance during that period.

[47] That Axidares (or Exedares) was a son of Pacorus and king of

Armenia before Parthomasiris, but had been deposed by Chosroes, is

shown by the remnants of Dio’s account, lxviii. 17; and to this point

also the two fragments of Arrian (16 Müller), the first, probably from

an address of a supporter of the interests of Axidares to Trajan:

Ἀξιδάρην δὲ ὅτι ἄρχειν χρὴ Ἀρμενίας, οὔ μοι δοκεῖ εἶναί σε ἀμφίλογον,

whereupon doubtless the complaints brought against Parthomasiris

followed; and the answer, evidently of the emperor, that it is not the

business of Axidares, but his, to judge as to Parthomasiris, because

he--apparently Axidares--had first broken the treaty and suffered for

it. What fault the emperor imputes to Axidares is not clear; but in Dio

also Chosroes says that he has not satisfied either the Romans or the

Parthians.

[48] The remnants of Dio’s account in Xiphilinus and Zonaras show

clearly that the Parthian expedition falls into two campaigns, the

first (Dio, lvi. 17, 1, 18, 2, 23-25), which is fixed at A.D. 115

by the consulate of Pedo (the date also of Malalas, p. 275, for the

earthquake of Antioch, 13 Dec. 164 of the Antiochene era = A.D. 115

agrees therewith), and the second (Dio, c. 26-32, 3), which is fixed at

A.D. 116 by the conferring of the title _Parthicus_ (c. 28, 2), took

place between April and August of that year (see my notice in Droysen,

_Hellenismus_, iii. 2, 361). That at c. 23 the titles _Optimus_

(conferred in the course of A.D. 114) and _Parthicus_ are mentioned

out of the order of time, is shown as well by their juxtaposition as

by the later recurrence of the second honour. Of the fragments most

belong to the first campaign; c. 22, 3 and probably also 22, 1, 2 to

the second.--The acclamations of _imperator_ do not stand in the way.

Trajan was demonstrably in the year 113 imp. VI. (_C. I. L._ vi. 960);

in the year 114 imp. VII. (_C. I. L._ ix. 1558 _et al._); in the year

115 imp. IX. (_C. I. L._ ix. 5894 _et al._), and imp. XI. (Fabretti,

398, 289 _et al._); in the year 116 imp. XII. (_C. I. L._ viii. 621,

x. 1634), and XIII. (_C. I. L._ iii. D. xxvii.). Dio attests an

acclamation from the year 115 (lxviii. 19), and one from the year 116

(lxviii. 28); there is ample room for both, and there is no reason to

refer imp. VII. precisely, as has been attempted, to the subjugation of

Armenia.

[49] The pungent description of the Syrian army of Trajan in Fronto

(p. 206 f. Naber) agrees almost literally with that of the army of

Corbulo in Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 35. “The Roman troops generally had

sadly degenerated (_ad ignaviam redactus_) through being long disused

to military service; but the most wretched of the soldiers were the

Syrian, insubordinate, refractory, unpunctual at the call to arms,

not to be found at their post, drunk from midday onward; unaccustomed

even to carry arms and incapable of fatigue, ridding themselves of

one piece of armour after another, half naked like the light troops

and the archers. Besides they were so demoralised by the defeats they

had suffered that they turned their backs at the first sight of the

Parthians, and the trumpets were regarded by them, as it were, as

giving the signal to run away.” In the contrasting description of

Trajan it is said among other things: “He did not pass through the

tents without closely concerning himself as to the soldiers, but showed

his contempt for the Syrian luxury, and looked closely into the rough

doings of the Pannonians (_sed contemnere_--so we must read--_Syrorum

munditias, introspicere Pannoniorum inscitias_); so he judged of the

serviceableness (_ingenium_) of the man according to his bearing

(_cultus_).” In the Oriental army of Severus also the “European” and

the Syrian soldiers are distinguished (Dio, lxxv. 12).

[50] This is shown by the _mala proelia_ in the passage of Fronto

quoted, and by Dio’s statement, lxviii. 19, that Trajan took Samosata

without a struggle; thus the 16th legion stationed there had lost it.

[51] It may be that at the same time Armenia also revolted. But when

Gutschmid (quoted by Dierauer in Büdinger’s _Untersuchungen_, i. 179),

makes Meherdotes and Sanatrukios, whom Malalas adduces as kings of

Persia in the Trajanic war, into kings of Armenia again in revolt,

this result is attained by a series of daring conjectures, which shift

the names of persons and peoples as much as they transform the causal

nexus of events. There are certainly found in the confused coil of

legends of Malalas some historical facts, _e.g._ the installation of

Parthamaspates (who is here son of king Chosroes of Armenia) as king of

Parthia by Trajan; and so, too, the dates of Trajan’s departure from

Rome in October (114), of his landing in Seleucia in December, and of

his entrance into Antioch on the 7th Jan. (115) may be correct. But,

as this report stands, the historian can only decline to accept it; he

cannot rectify it.

[52] Fronto, _Princ. hist._ p. 209 Naber: _cum praesens Traianus

Euphratis et Tigridis portoria equorum et camelorum trib_[_utaque

ordinaret, Ma_]_cer_ (?) _caesus est_. This applies to the moment when

Babylonia and Mesopotamia revolted, while Trajan was tarrying at the

mouth of the Tigris.

[53] Nearly with equal warrant, Julian (_Caes._ p. 328) makes the

emperor say that he had not taken up arms against the Parthians before

they had violated right, and Dio (lxviii. 17) reproaches him with

having waged the war from ambition.

[54] Hadrian cannot possibly have released Armenia from the position

of a Roman dependency. The notice of his biographer, c. 21: _Armeniis

regem habere permisit, cum sub Traiano legatum habuissent_ points

rather to the contrary, and we find at the end of Hadrian’s reign a

contingent of Armenians in the army of the governor of Cappadocia

(Arrian, _c. Alan._ 29). Pius did not merely induce the Parthians by

his representations to desist from the intended invasion of Armenia

(_vita_, 9), but also in fact invested them with Armenia (coins from

the years 140-144, Eckhel, vii. p. 15). The fact also that Iberia

certainly stood in the relation of dependence under Pius, because

otherwise the Parthians could not have brought complaints as to its

king in Rome (Dio, lxix. 15), presupposes a like dependent relation for

Armenia. The names of the Armenian kings of this period are not known.

If the _proximae gentes_, with the rule of which Hadrian compensated

the Parthian prince nominated as Parthian king by Trajan (_vita_, c.

5), were in fact Armenians, which is not improbable, there lies in it

a confirmation as well of the lasting dependence of Armenia on Rome as

of the continuous rule of the Arsacids there. Even the Ἀυρήλιος Πάκορος

βασιλεὺς μεγάλης Ἀρμενίας, who erected a monument in Rome to his

brother Aurelius Merithates who died there (_C. I. Gr._ 6559), belongs

from his name to the house of the Arsacids. But he was hardly the king

of Armenia installed by Vologasus IV. and deposed by the Romans (p.

74); if the latter had come to Rome as a captive, we should know it,

and even he would hardly have been allowed to call himself king of

Great Armenia in a Roman inscription.

[55] As vassals holding from Trajan or Hadrian, Arrian (_Peripl._ c.

15) adduces the Heniochi and Machelones (comp. Dio, lxviii. 18; lxxi.

14); the Lazi (comp. Suidas, _s. v._ Δομετιανός), over whom also Pius

put a king (_vita_, 9); the Apsilae; the Abasgi; the Sanigae, these

all within the imperial frontier reaching as far as Dioscurias =

Sebastopolis; beyond it, in the region of the Bosporan vassal-state,

the Zichi or Zinchi (_ib._ c. 27).

[56] This is confirmed not only by Arrian, _Peripl._ c. 7, but by the

officer of Hadrian’s time _praepositus numerorum tendentium in Ponto

Absaro_ (_C. I. L._ x. 1202).

[57] Comp. p. 75 note 2. The detachment probably of 1000 men (because

under a tribune) doing garrison duty in the year 185 in Valarshapat

(Etshmiazin) not far from Artaxata, belonged to one of the Cappadocian

legions (_C. I. L._ iii. 6052).

[58] Hadrian’s efforts after the friendship of the Oriental

vassal-princes are often brought into prominence, not without a hint

that he was more than fairly indulgent to them (_vita_, c. 13, 17,

21). Pharasmanes of Iberia did not come to Rome on his invitation, but

complied with that of Pius (_vita Hadr._ 13, 21; _vita Pii_, 9; Dio,

lxix. 15, 2, which excerpt belongs to Pius).

[59] We still possess the remarkable report of the governor of

Cappadocia under Hadrian, Flavius Arrianus, upon the mobilising of the

Cappadocian army against the “Scythians” among his minor writings; he

was himself at the Caucasus and visited the passes there (Lydus, _de

Mag._ iii. 53).

[60] This we learn from the fragments of Dio’s account in Xiphilinus,

Zonaras, and in the Excerpts; Zonaras has preserved the correct reading

Ἀλανοί instead of Ἀλβανοί; that the Alani pillaged also the territory

of the Albani, is shown by the setting of the exc. Ursin. lxxii.

[61] So he is named in Lucian, _Hist. conscr._ 21; if the same calls

him (_Alex._ 27) Othryades, he is drawing here from a historian of the

stamp of those whom he ridicules in that treatise, and of whom another

Hellenised the same man as Oxyroes (_Hist. conscr._ c. 18).

[62] Syria was administered when the war broke out by L. Attidius

Cornelianus (_C. I. Gr._ 4661 of the year 160; _vita Marci_, 8; _C.

I. L._ iii. 129 of the year 162), after him by Julius Verus (_C. I.

L._ iii. 199, probably of the year 163) and then by Avidius Cassius

presumably from the year 164. The statement that the other provinces of

the East were assigned to Cassius’s command (Philostratus, _vit. Soph._

i. 13; Dio, lxxi. 3), similarly to what was done to Corbulo as legate

of Cappadocia, can only relate to the time after the departure of the

emperor Verus; so long as the latter held the nominal chief command

there was no room for it.