CHAPTER I.

Transcriber's Notes: Italic text is marked _thus_. The original

accentuation, spelling and hyphenation has been retained. See further

Transcriber's Notes which follow the Index.

THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN

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TORONTO

THE PROVINCES

OF THE

ROMAN EMPIRE

FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN

BY

THEODOR MOMMSEN

TRANSLATED

WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION AND ADDITIONS

BY

WILLIAM P. DICKSON, D.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

VOL. I

_WITH EIGHT MAPS BY PROFESSOR KIEPERT_

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1909

_First Edition_ 1886

_Reprinted with corrections_ 1909

TO

LEOPOLD KRONECKER

AND

RICHARD SCHÖNE

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE

PREFACE

A wish has often been expressed to me that the History of Rome might

be continued, and I have a desire to meet it, although it is difficult

for me, after an interval of thirty years, to take up again the thread

at the point where I had to let it drop. That the present portion does

not attach itself immediately to the preceding, is a matter of little

moment; the fifth volume would be just as much a fragment without the

sixth as the sixth now is without the fifth. Besides, I am of opinion

that, for the purposes of the cultured public, in whose minds this

History is intended to promote an intelligent conception of Roman

antiquity, other works may take the place of the Two Books, which

are still wanting between this (the Eighth) and the earlier ones,

more readily than a substitute can be found for that now issued. The

struggle of the Republicans in opposition to the monarchy erected by

Caesar, and the definitive establishment of the latter, are so well

presented in the accounts handed down to us from antiquity that every

delineation amounts essentially to a reproduction of their narrative.

The distinctive character of the monarchical rule and the fluctuations

of the monarchy, as well as the general relations of government

influenced by the personality of the individual rulers, which the

Seventh Book is destined to exhibit, have been at least subjected

to frequent handling. Of what is here furnished--the history of the

several provinces from the time of Caesar to that of Diocletian,--there

is, if I am not mistaken, no comprehensive survey anywhere accessible

to the public to which this work addresses itself; and it is owing,

as it seems to me, to the want of such a survey that the judgment of

that public as to the Roman imperial period is frequently incorrect

and unfair. No doubt such a separation of these special histories from

the general history of the empire, as is in my opinion a preliminary

requisite to the right understanding of the history of the imperial

period, cannot be carried out completely as regards various sections,

especially for the period from Gallienus to Diocletian; and in these

cases the general picture, which still remains to be given, will have

to supply what is wanting.

If an historical work in most cases acquires a more vivid clearness

by an accompanying map, this holds in an especial degree true of our

survey of the Empire of three Continents according to its provinces,

and but few of its readers can have in their hands maps adequate for

the purpose. These will accordingly be grateful, along with me, to

my friend Dr. Kiepert, for having, in the manner and with the limits

suggested by the contents of these volumes, annexed to them, first

of all, a sheet presenting a general outline of the _Orbis Romanus_,

which serves moreover in various respects to supply gaps in those that

follow, and, in succession, nine special maps of the several portions

of the empire drawn--with the exception of sheets 5, 7, 8, 9--on the

same scale. The ancient geographical names occurring in the volumes,

and the more important modern ones, are entered upon the maps; names

not mentioned in the volumes are appended only, in exceptional cases,

as landmarks for the reader's benefit. The mode of writing Greek names

followed in the book itself has been displaced by the Latinising

spelling--for the sake of uniformity--in several maps in which Latin

names preponderate. The sequence of the maps corresponds on the whole

to that of the book; only it seemed, out of regard for space, desirable

to present on the same sheet several provinces such as, _e.g._ Spain

and Africa.

PREFATORY NOTE

In the fifth volume of his _Roman History_, issued in 1885, Mommsen

described the Roman provinces as they were during the first three

centuries of our era. It has been called, by one specially qualified

to judge, Otto Hirschfeld, the best volume of the whole work. It is

indeed a wonderful book. Here Mommsen summed up with supreme mastery

a vast and multifarious mass of detail. Thousands of inscriptions

yielded up their secrets; all scattered archaeological discoveries

found recognition; the vast and dim areas of the provinces took

definite shape and colour. Now at length it became easy to discern

the true character of the Roman Empire. Our horizon broadened beyond

the backstairs of the Palatine and the benches of the Curia to the

wide lands north and east and south of the Mediterranean, and we began

to realise the achievements of the Empire--its long and peaceable

government of dominions extending into three continents, its gifts of

civilisation, language, and citizenship to almost all its subjects, its

creation of a stable and coherent order out of which rose the Europe of

to-day. The old theory of an age of despotism and decay was overthrown.

The believer in human nature could now feel confident that, whatever

their limitations and defects, the men of the Empire wrought for the

progress and happiness of the world.

The book was at once translated into English by, or at least

under the supervision of, the late Dr. W. P. Dickson, Professor of

Divinity in the University of Glasgow. Twenty-five years before,

the same translator had rendered the earlier volumes of the history

into English, and rendered them to the satisfaction of all readers.

The translation of the fifth volume was less happy. Its style was

difficult, and its errors--at least in some chapters--were numerous and

surprising. The ideal remedy for the evil would be a fresh version.

But the ideal is seldom attainable in published literature, and good

prose translations are particularly rare. When, therefore, the time

came to reprint the book, it seemed best not to let it again appear

as it was, but to attempt some revision, even though the existence of

stereotyped plates confined that revision within very narrow limits. I

have accordingly altered a large number of passages where Dr. Dickson's

rendering was unintelligible or inaccurate, and I have tried to take

account of the few changes which Mommsen himself introduced into the

original German down to the fifth and last edition of 1904. In doing

this I have had valuable help, which I desire to acknowledge, from Dr.

George Macdonald. That I have left many defects, both by accident and

by the exigencies of the stereotyped plates, is inevitable. But the

alterations run into several hundreds, and at any rate "the government

which prohibited voluntary fireworks" (freiwillige Feuerwehren), the

"tribes who dwelt in hurdles" (Hürden), and the "crescents which gave

the signal to run away" (Hörner), and some similar blots have vanished.

As the translation is intended for English readers, I have added some

notes on the chapter relating to Britain. It was far too large a

task to do the same for other chapters. But a few references may be

added here on two general questions. The results obtained by recent

excavations on the Germano-Raetian Limes (Chapter IV., pp. 152 foll.)

have been well summarised in E. Fabricius' _Die Besitznahme Badens

durch die Römer_ (Heidelberg, 1905), in an article by G. Lachenmaier

in the _Württembergische Vierteljahreshefte für Landesgeschichte_ for

1906, and in one by the late Professor Pelham in the _Transactions_ of

the Royal Historical Society, reprinted as Chapter IX. in his collected

papers (Clarendon Press, 1909). The student should also consult the

excellent _Berichte über die ... römisch-germ. Forschung_ for 1905-8,

edited by Dr. H. Dragendorff (Frankfurt, 1905-9). The problem of the

Hellenisation of Syria (Chapter X.) has been treated, with a solution

unfavourable to the Hellenic element, by Theodor Nöldeke in the

_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_ for 1885

(xxxix. 332), and the two views have been compared by Mitteis in his

_Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_ (Leipzig, 1891, pp. 25 foll.).

The maps are those prepared by the late Dr. Kiepert for the original

German. Modern and medieval names are printed in letters slanting

backwards; in Maps VIII. and IX. old Oriental names are included in

square brackets. The presence of a few German terminations or words on

some of the maps will, I hope, cause little trouble.

F. HAVERFIELD.

CONTENTS

BOOK EIGHTH

_THE PROVINCES AND PEOPLE, FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN_

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 3

CHAPTER I.

THE NORTHERN FRONTIER OF ITALY 7

CHAPTER II.

SPAIN 63

CHAPTER III.

THE GALLIC PROVINCES 78

CHAPTER IV.

ROMAN GERMANY AND THE FREE GERMANS 117

CHAPTER V.

BRITAIN 170

CHAPTER VI.

THE DANUBIAN LANDS AND THE WARS ON THE DANUBE 195

CHAPTER VII.

GREEK EUROPE 252

CHAPTER VIII.

ASIA MINOR 320

MAPS I. to VIII.

INDEX From Vol. II.

BOOK EIGHTH.

THE PROVINCES AND PEOPLE FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN.

Go through the world and converse with every one.

FIRDUSI.

INTRODUCTION.

The history of Rome under the Empire presents problems similar to those

encountered in the history of the earlier Republic.

Such information as may be directly obtained from literary tradition

is not merely without form and colour, but in fact for the most part

without substance. The list of the Roman monarchs is just about as

trustworthy and just about as instructive as that of the consuls of the

republic. The great crises that convulsed the state may be discerned in

outline; but we are not much better informed as to the Germanic wars

under the emperors Augustus and Marcus, than as to the wars with the

Samnites. The republican store of anecdote is very much more decorous

than its counterpart under the empire; but the tales told of Fabricius

and of the emperor Gaius are almost equally insipid and equally

mendacious. The internal development of the commonwealth is perhaps

exhibited in the traditional accounts more fully for the earlier

republic than for the imperial period; in the former case there is

preserved a picture--however bedimmed and falsified--of the changes of

political order that were brought at least to their ultimate issue in

the open Forum of Rome; in the latter case the arrangements are settled

in the imperial cabinet, and come before the public, as a rule, merely

in unimportant matters of form. We must take into account, moreover,

the vast extension of the sphere of rule, and the shifting of the vital

development from the centre to the circumference. The history of the

city of Rome widens out into that of the country of Italy, and the

latter into that of the Mediterranean world; and of what we are most

concerned to know, we learn the least. The Roman state of this epoch

resembles a mighty tree, the main stem of which, in the course of its

decay, is surrounded by vigorous offshoots pushing their way upwards.

The Roman senate and the Roman rulers soon came to be drawn from any

other region of the empire just as much as from Italy; the Quirites of

this epoch, who have become the nominal heirs of the world-subduing

legionaries, have nearly the same relation to the memories of the olden

time as our Knights of St. John have to Rhodes and Malta; and they look

upon their heritage as a right capable of being turned to profitable

account--as an endowment provided for the benefit of the poor that

shrink from work.

Any one who has recourse to the so-called authorities for the history

of this period--even the better among them--finds difficulty in

controlling his indignation at the telling of what deserved to be

suppressed, and at the suppression of what there was need to tell.

For this epoch was also one productive of great conceptions and

far-reaching action. Seldom has the government of the world been

conducted for so long a term in an orderly sequence; and the firm rules

of administration, which Caesar and Augustus traced out for their

successors, maintained their ground, on the whole, with remarkable

steadfastness notwithstanding all those changes of dynasties and of

dynasts, which assume more than due prominence in a tradition that

looks merely to such things, and dwindles erelong into mere biographies

of the emperors. The sharply-defined sections, which--under the current

conception, misled by the superficial character of such a basis--are

constituted by the change of rulers, pertain far more to the doings

of the court than to the history of the empire. The carrying out of

the Latin-Greek civilising process in the form of perfecting the

constitution of the urban community, and the gradual bringing of the

barbarian or at any rate alien elements into this circle, were tasks,

which, from their very nature, required centuries of steady activity

and calm self-development; and it constitutes the very grandeur of

these centuries that the work once planned and initiated found this

long period of time, and this prevalence of peace by land and sea, to

facilitate its progress. Old age has not the power to develop new

thoughts and display creative activity, nor has the government of the

Roman empire done so; but in its sphere, which those who belonged

to it were not far wrong in regarding as the world, it fostered the

peace and prosperity of the many nations united under its sway longer

and more completely than any other leading power has ever succeeded

in doing. It is in the agricultural towns of Africa, in the homes of

the vine-dressers on the Moselle, in the flourishing townships of the

Lycian mountains, and on the margin of the Syrian desert that the work

of the imperial period is to be sought and to be found. Even now there

are various regions of the East, as of the West, as regards which the

imperial period marks a climax of good government, very modest in

itself, but never withal attained before or since; and, if an angel of

the Lord were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus

Antoninus was governed with the greater intelligence and the greater

humanity at that time or in the present day, whether civilisation

and national prosperity generally have since that time advanced or

retrograded, it is very doubtful whether the decision would prove in

favour of the present. But, if we find that this was the case, we ask

of our surviving books for the most part in vain how it came to be

so. They no more give an answer to this question than the traditional

accounts of the earlier republic explain the mighty phenomenon of the

Rome, which, in the footsteps of Alexander, subdued and civilised the

world.

The one void as little admits of being filled up as the other. But it

seemed worth our making the attempt for once to turn away our eyes

from the pictures of the rulers with their bright or faded, and but

too often falsified, colours, as well as from the task of linking into

a semblance of chronological order fragments that do not fit each

other; and, instead of this, to collect and arrange such materials as

tradition and the monuments furnish for a description of the Roman

provincial government. It seemed worth while to collate the accounts

accidentally preserved by the one or by the other, to note traces of

the process of growth embedded in its results, and to view the general

institutions in their relation to the individual provinces, along with

the conditions given for each by the nature of the soil and of the

inhabitants, so as to work out by the imagination--which is the author

of all history as of all poetry--if not a complete picture, at any rate

a substitute for it.

In this attempt I have not sought to go beyond the epoch of

Diocletian. A summary glance, at the utmost, into the new government

which was then created may fitly form the keystone of this narrative;

to estimate it fully would require a separate narration and another

frame for its setting--an independent historical work, carried out in

the large spirit and with the comprehensive glance of Gibbon, but with

a more accurate understanding of details. Italy and its islands have

been excluded; for the account of these cannot be dissociated from

that of the general government of the empire. The external history,

as it is called, of the imperial period is dealt with as an integral

part of the provincial administration; what we should call imperial

wars were not carried on under the empire against those outside of

its pale, although the conflicts called forth by the rounding off, or

the defence, of the frontier sometimes assumed such proportions as

to make them seem wars between two powers similar in kind, and the

collapse of the Roman rule in the middle of the third century, which

for some decades seemed as though it were to become its definitive end,

grew out of the unhappy conduct of frontier-defence at several places

simultaneously. Our narrative opens with the great work of pushing

forward, and of regulating the frontier towards the north, which was

partly carried out and partly failed under Augustus. At other points

we bring together the events that occurred on each of the three chief

arenas for frontier-defence--the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates. The

remainder of the narrative is arranged according to provinces. Charms

of detail, pictures of feeling, sketches of character, it has none to

offer; it is allowable for the artist, but not for the historian, to

reproduce the features of Arminius. With self-denial this book has been

written; and with self-denial let it be read.

CHAPTER I.

THE NORTHERN FRONTIER OF ITALY.

[Sidenote: Northern boundary of the empire.]

The Roman Republic extended its territory chiefly by means of the sea

towards the west, south, and east: little was done towards extending

it in the direction, in which Italy and the two peninsulas dependent

upon it to the west and east are connected with the great mainland of

Europe. The region which lay behind Macedonia was not subject to the

Romans, nor yet even the northern slope of the Alps; only the inland

region behind the south coast of Gaul had been annexed by Caesar to

the empire. Looking to the position occupied by the empire in general,

this state of things could not be allowed to continue; the fact that

the inert and unstable rule of the aristocracy had been superseded

could not but tell with preeminent effect in this sphere of action.

Caesar had not charged the heirs of his dictatorial power with the

extension of Roman territory on the north slope of the Alps and on the

right bank of the Rhine so directly as with the conquest of Britain;

but in reality such an enlargement of the bounds suggested itself

far more naturally, and was more necessary, than the subduing of the

transmarine Celts, and we can readily understand why Augustus took

in hand the former and omitted the latter. The task was divided into

three great sections--the operations on the northern frontier of the

Graeco-Macedonian peninsula, in the region of the middle and lower

Danube, in Illyricum; those on the northern frontier of Italy itself,

in the region of the upper Danube, in Raetia and Noricum; lastly,

those on the right bank of the Rhine, in Germany. Though conducted

for the most part independently, the military political measures in

these regions had yet an inward connection; and, as they all had their

origin from the free initiative of the Roman government, they can only

be understood in their success or in their partial failure, when they

are looked at from a military and political point of view as a whole.

We shall, therefore, in our account of them, follow the connection of

place rather than the order of time; the structure, of which they are

but parts, is better viewed in its internal compactness than according

to the succession of the several buildings composing it.

[Sidenote: Dalmatian war.]

The prelude to this great aggregate of action was formed by the

measures which Caesar the Younger, so soon as he had his hands free

in Italy and Spain, undertook on the upper coasts of the Adriatic and

in the inland region adjacent to them. In the hundred and fifty years

that had elapsed since the founding of Aquileia, the Roman merchant

had doubtless from that centre possessed himself more and more of the

traffic; yet the state, directly as such, had made little progress.

Considerable trading settlements had been formed at the chief ports of

the Dalmatian coast, and also, on the road leading from Aquileia into

the valley of the Save, at Nauportus (Upper Laybach); Dalmatia, Bosnia,

Istria, and Carniola were deemed Roman territory, and the region along

the coast at least was actually subject; but the founding of towns in a

legal sense still remained to be done, quite as much as the subduing of

the inhospitable interior.

Here, however, another element had to be taken into account. In the

war between Caesar and Pompeius the native Dalmatians had as decidedly

taken part for the latter as the Roman settlers there had taken the

side of Caesar; even after the defeat of Pompeius at Pharsalus, and

after the Pompeian fleet had been driven from the Illyrian waters (iv.

456) {iv. 434.}, the natives continued their resistance with energy

and success. The brave and able Publius Vatinius, who had formerly

taken a very effective part in these conflicts, was sent with a strong

army to Illyricum, apparently in the year before Caesar's death,

and that merely as the vanguard of the main army, with which the

Dictator himself intended to follow in order to overthrow the Dacians,

who just then were putting forth their rising power (iv. 305) {iv.

291.}, and to regulate the state of affairs in the whole domain of

the Danube. The execution of this plan was precluded by the daggers

of the assassins. It was fortunate that the Dacians did not on their

part penetrate into Macedonia; Vatinius himself fought against the

Dalmatians unsuccessfully, and sustained severe losses. Thereafter,

when the republicans took up arms in the East, the Illyrian army joined

that of Brutus, and for a considerable time the Dalmatians remained

free from attack. After the overthrow of the republicans, Antonius, to

whom, in the partition of the empire, Macedonia had fallen, caused the

insubordinate Dardani in the north-west and the Parthini on the coast

(eastward from Durazzo) to be put to rout in the year 715 {39.}, when

the celebrated orator Gaius Asinius Pollio gained triumphal honours.

In Illyricum, which was under Caesar, nothing could be done so long as

the latter had to direct his whole power to the Sicilian war against

Sextus Pompeius; but after its successful termination Caesar personally

threw himself with vigour into this task. The small tribes from Doclea

(Cernagora), as far as the Iapydes (near Fiume), were in the first

campaign (719) {35.} either brought back to subjection or now for the

first time subdued. It was not a great war with pitched battles of

note, but the mountain-conflicts with the brave and desperate tribes,

and the capture of the strongholds furnished in part with Roman

appliances of war, formed no easy task; in none of his wars did Caesar

display to an equal extent his own energy and personal valour. After

the toilsome subjugation of the territory of the Iapydes, he marched

in the very same year along the valley of the Kulpa to the point where

it joins the Save; the strong place Siscia (Sziszek) situated at that

point, the chief place of arms of the Pannonians, against which the

Romans had never hitherto advanced with success, was now occupied and

destined as a basis for the war against the Dacians, which Caesar

purposed next to undertake. In the two following years (720, 721)

{34, 33.}, the Dalmatians, who had for a number of years been in arms

against the Romans, were forced to submit after the fall of their

fortress Promona (Promina, near Dernis, above Sebenico). Still more

important than these military successes was the work of peace, which

was carried on about the same time, and which they were intended to

secure. It was doubtless in these years that the ports along the

Istrian and Dalmatian coast, so far as they lay within the field of

Caesar's rule, Tergeste (Trieste), Pola, Iader (Zara), Salonae (near

Spalato), Narona (at the mouth of the Narenta), as well as Emona

(Laybach), beyond the Alps, on the route from Aquileia over the Julian

Alps to the Save, obtained, through Caesar's successor, some of them

town-walls, all of them town-rights. The places themselves had probably

all been already long in existence as Roman villages; but it was at any

rate of essential importance that they were now inserted on a footing

of equal privilege among the Italian _municipia_.

[Sidenote: Preparation for the Dacian war.]

The Dacian war was intended to follow; but the civil war stepped in

before it a second time. It summoned the ruler not to Illyricum, but

to the East, and the heavings of the great decisive struggle between

Caesar and Antonius reached even to the distant region of the Danube.

The people of the Dacians, united and purified by king Burebista

(Boerebistas, iv. 305) {iv. 291.}, now under king Cotiso, found itself

courted by the two antagonists--Caesar was even accused of having

sought the king's daughter in marriage, and having offered to him

in turn the hand of his five-year-old daughter Julia. It is easy to

understand how the Dacian should, in view of the invasion planned by

the father and ushered in by the son with the fortification of Siscia,

have attached himself to the side of Antonius; and had he done what

people in Rome feared--had he, while Caesar was fighting in the East,

penetrated from the north into defenceless Italy; or had Antonius, in

accordance with the proposal of the Dacians, sought the decision of the

struggle not in Epirus but in Macedonia, and drawn thither the Dacian

bands to help him, the fortunes of the war might perhaps have ended

otherwise. But neither the one nor the other took place; moreover,

at that very time the Dacian state, created by the vigorous hand of

Burebista, again went to pieces; internal troubles, perhaps also the

attacks from the north by the Germanic Bastarnae and by the Sarmatian

tribes that subsequently environed Dacia on all sides, prevented the

Dacians from interfering in the Roman civil war, in the decision of

which their future also was at stake.

Immediately after that war was decided, Caesar set himself to regulate

the state of things on the lower Danube. But, partly because the

Dacians themselves were no longer so much to be dreaded as formerly,

partly because Caesar now ruled no longer merely over Illyricum, but

over the whole Graeco-Macedonian peninsula, the latter became the

primary basis of the Roman operations. Let us picture to ourselves the

peoples, and the relations of the ruling powers, which Augustus found

there.

[Sidenote: Macedonian frontier.]

Macedonia had been for centuries a Roman province. As such, it did not

reach beyond Stobi to the north and the Rhodope mountains to the east;

but the range of Rome's power stretched far beyond the frontier proper

of the country, although varying in compass and not fixed in point of

form. Approximately the Romans seem to have been the leading power at

that time as far as the Haemus (Balkan), while the region beyond the

Balkan as far as the Danube had been possibly trodden by Roman troops,

but was by no means dependent on Rome.[1] Beyond the Rhodope mountains

the Thracian dynasts, who were neighbours to Macedonia, especially

those of the Odrysians (ii. 309) {ii. 290.}, to whom the greatest

portion of the south coast and a part of the coast of the Black Sea

were subject, had been brought by the expedition of Lucullus (iv. 41)

{iv. 39.} under the Roman protectorate; while the inhabitants of the

more inland territories, especially the Bessi on the upper Maritza,

were perhaps called subjects, but were not so, and their incursions

into the settled territory as well as retaliatory expeditions into

theirs were of constant occurrence. Thus, about the year 694 {60.},

Augustus' own father, Gaius Octavius, and in the year 711 {43.}, during

the preparations for the war against the triumvirs, Marcus Brutus had

fought against them. Another Thracian tribe, the Dentheletae (in the

district of Sofia), had, even in Cicero's time, on an incursion into

Macedonia, threatened to besiege its capital Thessalonica. With the

Dardani, the western neighbours of the Thracians, a branch of the

Illyrian family, who inhabited southern Servia and the district of

Prisrend, Curio, the predecessor in office of Lucullus, had fought

successfully; and ten years later Cicero's colleague in the consulate,

Gaius Antonius, unsuccessfully in the year 692 {62.}. Below the

Dardanian territory, again, there were settled close to the Danube

Thracian tribes, the once powerful but now reduced Triballi in the

valley of the Oescus (in the region of Plewna), and farther on, along

both banks of the Danube to its mouth, Dacians, or, as on the right

bank of the river they were usually called by the old national name

which was retained also by their Asiatic kinsmen, Mysians or Moesians,

probably in Burebista's time a part of his kingdom, now once more split

up into different principalities. But the most powerful people between

the Balkan and the Danube at that time were the Bastarnae. We have

already on several occasions met with this brave and numerous race,

the eastmost branch of the great Germanic family (ii. 308) {ii. 290.}.

Settled, strictly speaking, behind the Transdanubian Dacians beyond the

mountains which separate Transylvania from Moldavia, at the mouths of

the Danube and in the wide region from these to the Dniester, they were

themselves outside of the Roman sphere; but from their ranks especially

had both king Philip of Macedonia and king Mithridates of Pontus formed

their armies, and in this way the Romans had often already fought with

them. Now they had crossed the Danube in great masses, and established

themselves north of the Haemus; in so far as the Dacian war, as planned

by Cæsar the father and then by the son, had doubtless for its object

to gain the right bank of the lower Danube, it was not less directed

against them than against the Dacian Moesians on the right bank. The

Greek coast towns in the barbarian land, Odessus (near Varna), Tomis,

Istropolis, hard pressed by these movements of the nations surging

around them, were here as everywhere from the outset clients of the

Romans.

At the time of Caesar's dictatorship, when Burebista was at the height

of his power, the Dacians had executed that fearful devastating raid

along the coast as far down as Apollonia, the traces of which were not

yet obliterated after a century and a half. It may probably have been

this invasion that at first induced Caesar the elder to undertake the

Dacian war; and after that the son now ruled also over Macedonia, he

could not but feel himself under obligation to interfere here at once

and with energy. The defeat which Cicero's colleague, Antonius, had

sustained near Istropolis at the hands of the Bastarnae may be taken as

a proof that these Greeks needed once more the aid of the Romans.

[Sidenote: Subjugation of Moesia by Crassus.]

In fact soon after the battle of Actium (725) {29.} Marcus Licinius

Crassus, the grandson of him who had fallen at Carrhae, was sent by

Caesar to Macedonia as governor, and charged now to carry out the

campaign that had twice been hindered. The Bastarnae, who just then

had invaded Thrace, submitted without resistance, when Crassus had

them summoned to leave the Roman territory; but their retreat was not

sufficient for the Roman. He, on his part, crossed the Haemus,[2] at

the confluence of the Cibrus (Tzibritza) with the Danube, defeated the

enemy, whose king, Deldo, was left on the field of battle; and, with

the help of a Dacian prince adhering to the Romans, took prisoners all

that had escaped from the battle and sought shelter in a neighbouring

stronghold. Without offering further resistance the whole Moesian

territory submitted to the conqueror of the Bastarnae. These returned

next year to avenge the defeat which they had suffered; but they once

more succumbed, and, with them, such of the Moesian tribes as had again

taken up arms. Thus these enemies were once for all expelled from the

right bank of the Danube, and the latter was entirely subjected to

the Roman rule. At the same time the Thracians not hitherto subject

were chastised, the national shrine of Dionysos was taken from the

Bessi, and the administration of it was entrusted to the princes of

the Odrysians, who generally from that time, under the protection

of the Roman supreme power, exercised, or were assumed to exercise,

supremacy over the Thracian tribes south of the Haemus. The Greek

towns, moreover, on the coast of the Black Sea were placed under its

protection, and the rest of the conquered territory was assigned to

various vassal-princes, on whom devolved accordingly, in the first

instance, the protection of the frontier of the empire;[3] Rome had no

legions of her own left for these distant regions. Macedonia thereby

became an inland province, which had no further need of military

administration. The goal, which had been contemplated in those plans of

Dacian warfare, was attained.

Certainly this goal was merely a provisional one. But before Augustus

took in hand the definitive regulation of the northern frontier he

applied himself to reorganise the provinces already belonging to the

empire; more than ten years elapsed over the arrangement of things

in Spain, Gaul, Asia, and Syria. How, when what was needful in these

quarters was done, he set to work on his comprehensive task, we have

now to tell.

[Sidenote: Subjugation of the Alps.]

Italy, which bore sway over three continents, was still, we have

said, by no means absolutely master in her own house. The Alps, which

sheltered her on the north, were in all their extent, from one end

to the other, filled with small and but little civilised tribes of

Illyrian, Raetian, or Celtic nationality, whose territories in part

bordered closely on those of the great towns of the Transpadana--that

of the Trumpilini (Val Trompia) on the town of Brixia; that of the

Camunni (Val Camonica above the Lago d'Iseo) on the town of Bergomum;

that of the Salassi (Val d'Aosta) on Eporedia (Ivrea)--and whose

neighbourhood was by no means wont to be peaceful. Often enough

conquered and proclaimed at the Capitol as vanquished, these tribes, in

spite of the laurels of the men of note that triumphed over them, were

constantly plundering the farmers and the merchants of Upper Italy. The

mischief was not to be checked in earnest until the government resolved

to cross the Alpine chain and bring its northern slope also under their

power; for beyond doubt numbers of these depredators were constantly

streaming over the mountains to pillage the rich adjoining country. In

the direction of Gaul also similar work had to be done; the tribes in

the upper valley of the Rhone (Valais and Vaud) had indeed been subdued

by Caesar, but are also named among those that gave trouble to the

generals of his son. On the other side, the peaceful border-districts

of Gaul complained of the constant incursions of the Raeti. The

numerous expeditions arranged by Augustus on account of these evils do

not admit, or require, historical recital; they are not recorded in

the triumphal Fasti and do not fall under that head, but they gave to

Italy for the first time settled life in the north. We may mention the

subjugation of the already named Camunni in 738 {16.} by the governor

of Illyria, and that of certain Ligurian tribes in the region of Nice

in 740 {14.}, because they show how, even about the middle of the

Augustan age, these insubordinate tribes pressed directly upon Italy.

If the emperor subsequently, in the collective report on his imperial

administration, declared that violence had not been wrongfully employed

by him against any of these small tribes, this must be understood

to the effect that cessions of territory and change of abode were

demanded of them, and they resisted the demand; only the petty cantonal

union formed under king Cottius of Segusio (Susa) submitted without a

struggle to the new arrangement.

[Sidenote: Subjugation of the Raeti.]

The southern slopes and the valleys of the Alps formed the arena of

these conflicts. The establishment of the Romans on the north slope of

the mountains and in the adjoining country to the northward followed

in 739 {15.}. The two step-sons of Augustus reckoned as belonging to

the imperial house, Tiberius the subsequent emperor, and his brother

Drusus, were thereby introduced into the career of generalship for

which they were destined; very secure and very grateful were the

laurels put before them in prospect. Drusus penetrated from Italy up

the valley of the Adige into the Raetian mountains, and achieved here

a first victory; for the farther advance his brother, then governor of

Gaul, lent him a helping hand from Helvetia; on the lake of Constance

itself the Roman triremes defeated the boats of the Vindelici; on

the emperor's day, the 1st August 739 {15.}, in the vicinity of the

sources of the Danube, fought the last battle, whereby Raetia and

the land of the Vindelici--that is, the Tyrol, East Switzerland, and

Bavaria--became thenceforth constituent parts of the Roman empire. The

emperor Augustus had gone in person to Gaul to superintend the war and

the organisation of the new province. At the point where the Alps abut

on the Gulf of Genoa, on the height above Monaco, a monument commanding

a wide prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea, and not even yet wholly effaced,

was erected some years later by grateful Italy to the emperor Augustus,

because under his government all the Alpine tribes from the Upper to

the Lower Sea--the inscription enumerates forty-six of them--had been

brought under the power of the Roman people. It was no more than the

simple truth; and this war was what war ought to be--the guardian and

the guarantee of peace.

[Sidenote: Organisation of Raetia.]

A task more difficult doubtless than that of the war proper was

the organisation of the new territory; the more especially as

considerations of internal policy exerted to some extent a very

disturbing influence on it. Since, as things stood, the preponderance

of military power might not be located in Italy, the government had

to take care that the great military commands were removed as far

as possible from its immediate vicinity; indeed one of the motives

that conduced to the occupation of Raetia itself was the desire to

remove the command, which probably up to this time could not have

been dispensed with in Upper Italy itself, definitively away from

that region, as was thereupon actually done. It might most naturally

have been expected that there would be created on the north slope of

the Alps a great centre for the military posts indispensable in the

newly acquired territory; but a course the very opposite of this was

followed. Between Italy on the one hand, and the great commands on

the Rhine and Danube on the other, there was drawn a girdle of small

governorships, which were not merely all filled up by the emperor, but

were also filled up throughout with men not belonging to the senate.

Italy and the province of southern Gaul were separated by the three

small military districts of the Maritime Alps (department of the

Maritime Alps and the province of Cuneo), the Cottian Alps with Segusio

(Susa) as its chief town, and probably the Graian Alps (East Savoy).

Among these the second, administered by the already named cantonal

prince, Cottius, and his descendants for a time under the form of

clientship,[4] was of most importance, but they all possessed a certain

military power, and were primarily destined to maintain public safety

in the territory concerned, and above all on the important imperial

highways traversing it. The upper valley of the Rhone again--that

is, the Valais, and the newly conquered Raetia--were placed under a

commander of higher standing not in rank, but doubtless in power; a

corps, relatively speaking, considerable was here for the time being

indispensably requisite. In order, however, to provide for its being

diminished as far as possible, Raetia was in great measure depopulated

by the removal of its inhabitants. The circuit was closed by the

similarly organised province of Noricum, embracing the largest part of

what is now German Austria. This wide and fertile region had submitted

without substantial resistance to the Roman rule, probably in the form

of a dependent principality established in the first instance, but with

its prince erelong giving place to the imperial procurator, from whom,

for that matter, he did not essentially differ. Some, at all events,

of the Rhenish and Danubian legions had their fixed quarters in the

immediate neighbourhood, on the one hand of the Raetian frontier at

Vindonissa, on the other of the Norican frontier at Poetovio, obviously

to keep in check the adjoining province; but in that intermediate

region as little were there armies of the first rank with legions under

senatorial generals, as there were senatorial governors. The distrust

towards the corporation governing the state alongside of the emperor

finds very forcible expression in this arrangement.

[Sidenote: Roads and colonies in the Alps.]

Next to the protection of the peace of Italy the chief aim of this

organisation was to secure its communications with the north, which

were of not less urgent importance for traffic than in a military

point of view. With special energy Augustus took up this task; and he

doubtless deserved that his name should still live at the present day

in those of Aosta and Augsburg, perhaps also in that of the Julian

Alps. The old coast-road, which Augustus partly renewed, partly

constructed, from the Ligurian coast through Gaul and Spain to the

Atlantic Ocean, can only have served purposes of traffic. The road

also over the Cottian Alps, already opened up by Pompeius (iv. 28)

{iv. 27.}, was finished under Augustus by the already mentioned prince

of Susa, and named after him; in like manner a trading route, it

connects Italy, by way of Turin and Susa, with the commercial capital

of south Gaul, Arelate. But the military line proper--the direct

connection between Italy and the camps on the Rhine--led through the

valley of the Dora Baltea from Italy partly to Lyons the capital of

Gaul, partly to the Rhine. While the republic had confined itself

to bringing into its power the entrance of that valley by founding

Eporedia (Ivrea), Augustus possessed himself of it entirely by not

merely subjugating its inhabitants--the still restless Salassi, with

whom he had already fought during the Dalmatian war--but extirpating

them outright; 36,000 of them, including 8000 fighting men, were sold

under the hammer into slavery in the market-place of Eporedia, and

the purchasers were bound not to grant freedom to any of them within

twenty years. The camp itself, from which his general Varro Murena had

achieved their final defeat in 729 {25.}, became the fortress, which,

occupied by 3000 settlers taken from the imperial guard, was to secure

the communications--the town Augusta Praetoria, the modern Aosta,

whose walls and gates then erected are still standing. It commanded

subsequently two Alpine routes, as well that which led over the Graian

Alps or Little St. Bernard, along the upper Isère and the Rhone to

Lyons, as that which ran over the Poenine Alps, the Great St. Bernard,

to the valley of the Rhone and to the Lake of Geneva, and thence into

the valleys of the Aar and the Rhine. But it was for the first of these

roads that the town was designed, as it originally had only gates

leading east and west; nor could this be otherwise, for the fortress

was built ten years before the occupation of Raetia; in those years,

moreover, the later organisation of the camps on the Rhine was not yet

in existence, and the direct connection between the capitals of Italy

and Gaul was altogether of the foremost importance. In the direction

of the Danube we have already mentioned the laying out of Emona on the

upper Save, on the old trade-road from Aquileia over the Julian Alps

into the Pannonian territory. This road was at the same time the chief

artery for the military communication of Italy with the region of the

Danube. Lastly, with the conquest of Raetia was connected the opening

of the route which led from the last Italian town Tridentum (Trent),

up the Adige valley, to the newly established Augusta in the land of

the Vindelici, the modern Augsburg, and onward to the upper Danube.

Subsequently, when the son of the general who had first opened up this

region came to reign, this road received the name of the Claudian

highway.[5] It furnished the means of connection, indispensable from a

military point of view, between Raetia and Italy; but in consequence of

the comparatively small importance of the Raetian army, and doubtless

also in consequence of the more difficult communication, it never had

the same importance as the route of Aosta.

The Alpine passes and the north slope of the Alps were thus in

secure possession of the Romans. Beyond the Alps there stretched

to the east of the Rhine the land of the Germans; to the south of

the Danube that of the Pannonians and the Moesians. Here, too, soon

after the occupation of Raetia, the offensive was taken, and nearly

contemporaneously in both directions. Let us look first at what

occurred on the Danube.

[Sidenote: Erection of Illyricum.]

The Danubian region, to all appearance up to 727 {27.} administered

along with Upper Italy, became then, on the reorganisation of the

empire, an independent administrative district, Illyricum, under

a governor of its own. It consisted of Dalmatia, with the country

behind it, as far as the Drin--while the coast farther to the south

had for long belonged to the province of Macedonia--and of the Roman

possessions in the land of the Pannonians on the Save. The region

between the Haemus and the Danube as far as the Black Sea, which

Crassus had shortly before brought into dependence on the empire,

as well as Noricum and Raetia, stood in a relation of clientship to

Rome, and so did not belong as such to this province, but withal were

primarily dependent on the governor of Illyricum. Thrace, north of the

Haemus, still by no means pacified, fell, from a military point of

view, to the same district. It was a continued effect of the original

organisation, and one which subsisted down to a late period, that the

whole region of the Danube from Raetia to Moesia was comprehended

as a customs-district under the name Illyricum in the wider sense.

Legions were stationed only in Illyricum proper, in the other districts

there were probably no imperial troops at all, or at the utmost small

detachments; the chief command was held by the proconsul of the new

province coming from the senate; while the soldiers and officers were,

as a matter of course, imperial. It attests the serious character of

the offensive beginning after the conquest of Raetia, that in the first

instance the co-ruler Agrippa took over the command in the region

of the Danube, to whom the proconsul of Illyricum had to become _de

iure_ subordinate; and then, when Agrippa's sudden death in the spring

of 742 {12.} broke down this combination, Illyricum in the following

year passed into imperial administration, and the imperial generals

obtained the chief commands in it. Soon three military centres were

here formed, which thereupon brought about the administrative division

of the Danubian region into three parts. The small principalities

in the territory conquered by Crassus gave place to the province of

Moesia, the governor of which henceforth, in what is now Servia and

Bulgaria, guarded the frontier against the Dacians and Bastarnae.

In what had hitherto been the province of Illyricum, a part of the

legionaries was posted on the Kerka and the Cettina, to keep in check

the still troublesome Dalmatians. The chief force was stationed in

Pannonia, on what was then the boundary of the empire, the Save. This

distribution of the legions and organisation of the provinces cannot

be fixed with chronological precision; probably the serious wars which

were waged simultaneously against the Pannonians and the Thracians, of

which we have immediately to speak, led in the first instance to the

institution of the governorship of Moesia, and it was not till some

time later that the Dalmatian legions and those on the Save obtained

commanders-in-chief of their own.

[Sidenote: First Pannonian war of Tiberius.]

As the expeditions against the Pannonians and the Germans were, as it

were, a repetition of the Raetian campaign on a more extended scale,

so the leaders, who were put at their head with the title of imperial

legates, were the same--once more the two princes of the imperial

house, Tiberius, who, in the place of Agrippa, took up the command

in Illyricum, and Drusus, who went to the Rhine, both now no longer

inexperienced youths, but men in the prime of their years, and well

fitted to take in hand severe work.

Immediate pretexts for the waging of war in the region of the Danube

were not wanting. Marauders from Pannonia, and even from the peaceful

Noricum, carried pillage in the year 738 {16.} as far as Istria. Two

years thereafter the Illyrian provincials took up arms against their

masters, and, although they returned to obedience without offering

opposition when Agrippa took over the command in the autumn of 741

{13.}, yet immediately after his death the disturbances are alleged

to have begun afresh. We cannot say how far these Roman accounts

correspond to the truth; certainly the pushing forward of the Roman

frontier, required by the general political situation, formed the real

motive and aim of the war. As to the three campaigns of Tiberius in

Pannonia from 742 to 744 {12 to 10.} we are very imperfectly informed.

Their result was stated by the government as the establishment of

the Danube as the boundary for the province of Illyricum. That this

river was thenceforth looked upon in its whole course as the boundary

of Roman territory, is doubtless correct; but a subjugation in the

proper sense, or even an occupation, of the whole of this wide domain

by no means took place at that time. The chief resistance to Tiberius

was offered by the tribes already at an earlier date declared Roman,

especially by the Dalmatians; among those first effectively subdued

at that time, the most noted was that of the Pannonian Breuci on the

lower Save. The Roman armies, during these campaigns, probably did

not cross the Drave, and did not in any case transfer their standing

camp to the Danube. The region between the Save and Drave was at all

events occupied, and the headquarters of the Illyrian northern army

were transferred from Siscia on the Save to Poetovio (Pettau) on the

middle Drave, while in the Norican region recently occupied the Roman

garrisons reached as far as the Danube at Carnuntum (Petronell, near

Vienna), at that time the last Norican town towards the east. The wide

and vast region between the Drave and the Danube, which now forms

western Hungary, was to all appearance at that time not even militarily

occupied. This was in keeping with the whole plan of the offensive

operations that were begun; the object sought was to be in touch with

the Gallic army, and for the new imperial frontier in the north-east

the natural base was not Buda, but Vienna.

[Sidenote: Thracian war of Piso.]

Complementary in some measure to this Pannonian expedition of Tiberius

was that which was simultaneously undertaken against the Thracians by

Lucius Piso, perhaps the first governor that Moesia had of its own. The

two great neighbouring nations, the Illyrians and the Thracians, of

whom we shall treat more fully in a subsequent chapter, stood alike at

that time in need of subjugation. The tribes of inland Thrace showed

themselves still more obstinate than the Illyrians, and far from

subordinate to the kings set over them by Rome; in 738 {16.} a Roman

army had to advance thither and come to the help of the princes against

the Bessi. If we had more exact accounts of the conflicts waged in

the one quarter as in the other in the years 741 to 743 {13 to 11.},

the contemporary action of the Thracians and Illyrians would perhaps

appear as concerted. Certain it is that the mass of the Thracian tribes

south of the Haemus and presumably also those settled in Moesia took

part in this national war, and that the resistance of the Thracians

was not less obstinate than that of the Illyrians. It was for them at

the same time a religious war; the shrine of Dionysos,[6] taken from

the Bessi and assigned to the Odrysian princes well disposed to Rome,

was not forgotten; a priest of this Dionysos stood at the head of the

insurrection, and it was directed in the first instance against those

Odrysian princes. One of them was taken and put to death, the other

was driven away; the insurgents, in part armed and disciplined after

the Roman model, were victors in the first engagement over Piso, and

penetrated as far as Macedonia and into the Thracian Chersonese; fears

were entertained for Asia. Ultimately, however, Roman discipline

gained the superiority over these brave opponents; in several campaigns

Piso mastered the resistance, and the command of Moesia, instituted

either already on this occasion or soon afterwards on "the Thracian

shore," broke up the connection of the Daco-Thracian peoples, by

separating the tribes on the left bank of the Danube and their kinsmen

south of the Haemus from each other, and permanently secured the Roman

rule in the region of the lower Danube.

[Sidenote: Attack of the Germans.]

[Sidenote: Defeat of Lollius.]

The Germans still more than the Pannonians and the Thracians gave

the Romans occasion to feel that the existing state of things could

not permanently continue. The boundary of the empire since Caesar's

time had been the Rhine from the lake of Constance to its mouth (iv.

258) {iv. 247.}. It was not a demarcation of peoples, for already

of old in the north-east of Gaul the Celts had on various occasions

mingled with Germans, the Treveri and Nervii would at least gladly

have been Germans (iv. 244) {iv. 233.}, and on the middle Rhine

Caesar himself had provided settlements for the remnant of the hosts

of Ariovistus--Triboci (in Alsace) Nemetes (about Spires), Vangiones

(about Worms). Those Germans on the left of the Rhine indeed adhered

more firmly to the Roman rule than the Celtic cantons, and it was not

they that opened the gates of Gaul to their countrymen on the right

bank. But these, long accustomed to predatory raids over the river

and by no means forgetting the half successful attempts on several

occasions to settle there, came unbidden. The only Germanic tribe

beyond the Rhine, which already in Caesar's time had separated from

their countrymen and placed themselves under Roman protection, the

Ubii, had to give way before the hatred of their exasperated kinsmen

and to seek protection and new abodes on the Roman bank (716) {38.};

Agrippa, although personally present in Gaul, had not been able,

amidst the pressure of the Sicilian war then impending, to help

them otherwise, and had crossed the Rhine merely to effect their

transference. From this settlement of theirs our Cologne subsequently

grew up. Not merely were the Romans trading on the right bank of the

Rhine subjected to various injuries by the Germans, so that even in

729 {25.} an advance over the Rhine was executed, and Agrippa in 734

{20.} had to expel from Gaul Germanic hordes that had come thither from

the Rhine; but in 738 {16.} the further bank was affected by a more

general movement, which terminated in an invasion on a great scale. The

Sugambri on the Ruhr took the lead, and with them their neighbours the

Usipes on the north in the valley of the Lippe, and the Tencteri on the

south; they attacked the Roman traders sojourning among them and nailed

them to the cross, then crossed the Rhine, pillaged the Gallic cantons

far and wide, and, when the governor of Germany sent the legate Marcus

Lollius with the fifth legion against them, they first cut off its

cavalry and then put the legion itself to disgraceful flight, on which

occasion even its eagle fell into their hands. After all this they

returned unassailed to their homes. This miscarriage of the Roman army,

though not of importance in itself, was not to be despised in presence

of the Germanic movement and even of the troublesome feeling in Gaul;

Augustus himself went to the province attacked, and this occurrence

may possibly have been the immediate occasion for the adoption of that

great movement of offence, which, beginning with the Raetian war in 739

{15.}, led on to the campaigns of Tiberius in Illyricum and of Drusus

in Germany.

[Sidenote: German war of Drusus.]

Nero Claudius Drusus, born in 716 {38.} by Livia in the house of her

new husband, afterwards Augustus, and loved and treated by the latter

like a son--evil tongues said, as his son--the very image of manly

beauty and of winning grace in converse, a brave soldier and an able

general, a pronounced panegyrist, moreover, of the old republican

system, and in every respect the most popular prince of the imperial

house, took up, on the return of Augustus to Italy (741) {13.}, the

administration of Gaul and the chief command against the Germans,

whose subjugation was now contemplated in earnest. We have no adequate

means of knowing either the strength of the army then stationed on the

Rhine, or how matters stood with the Germans; this much only is clear

that the latter were not in a position suitably to meet the compact

attack. The region of the Neckar formerly possessed by the Helvetii

(iii. 182) {iii. 173.}, then for long a debateable border-land between

them and the Germans, lay desolate and dominated on the one side by the

recently subdued district of the Vindelici, on the other side by the

Germans friendly to Rome about Strassburg, Spires, and Worms. Farther

northward, in the region of the upper Main, were settled the Marcomani,

perhaps the most powerful of the Suebian tribes, but from of old at

enmity with the Germans of the middle Rhine. Northward of the Main

followed first in the Taunus the Chatti, farther down the Rhine the

already named Tencteri, Sugambri, and Usipes; behind them the powerful

Cherusci on the Weser, besides a number of tribes of secondary rank.

As it was these tribes on the middle Rhine, with the Sugambri at their

head, that had carried out that attack on Roman Gaul, the retaliatory

expedition of Drusus was directed mainly against them, and they too

combined for joint resistance to Drusus and for the institution of a

national army to be formed from the contingents of all these cantons.

The Frisian tribes, however, on the coast of the North Sea did not join

the movement, but persevered in their peculiar isolation.

It was the Germans who assumed the offensive. The Sugambri and their

allies again seized all the Romans whom they could lay hold of on their

bank, and nailed to the cross the centurions among them, twenty in

number. The allied tribes resolved once more to invade Gaul, and even

divided the spoil beforehand--the Sugambri were to obtain the people,

the Cherusci the horses, the Suebian tribes the gold and silver. So

they attempted in the beginning of 742 {12.} again to cross the Rhine,

and hoped for the support of the Germans on the left bank of the river,

and even for an insurrection of the Gallic cantons just at that time

excited by the unwonted matter of the census. But the young general

took his measures well; he nipped the movement in the Roman territory

before it was well set agoing, drove back the invaders even as they

were crossing the river, and then crossed the stream on his own part,

in order to lay waste the territory of the Usipes and Sugambri. This

was a repulse for the time; the plan of the war proper, designed on a

grander scale, started from the acquisition of the North Sea coast and

of the mouths of the Ems and the Elbe. The numerous and valiant tribe

of the Batavi in the delta of the Rhine was soon incorporated--to all

appearance, at that time and by amicable concert--in the Roman empire;

with its help a communication by water was established from the Rhine

to the Zuyder See, and from the latter to the North Sea, which opened

up for the Rhine-fleet a safer and shorter way to the mouths of the Ems

and Elbe. The Frisians on the north coast followed the example of the

Batavi and likewise submitted to the foreign rule. It was doubtless

still more the moderate policy than the military preponderance of

the Romans, which paved the way for them here; these tribes remained

almost wholly exempt from tribute, and were drawn upon for war-service

in a way which did not alarm, but allured them. From this basis the

expedition proceeded along the coast of the North Sea; in the open

sea the island of Burchanis (perhaps Borchum off East Friesland) was

taken by assault; on the Ems the fleet of boats of the Bructeri was

vanquished by the Roman fleet; Drusus reached as far as the Chauci

at the mouth of the Weser. The fleet indeed on its return homewards

encountered dangerous and unknown shallows, and, but for the Frisians

affording a safe escort to the shipwrecked army, it would have been

in a very critical position. Nevertheless, by this first campaign the

coast from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Weser had been gained

for Rome.

[Sidenote: Death of Drusus.]

After the coast was thus acquired, the subjugation of the interior

began in the next year (743) {11.}. It was materially facilitated by

the dissensions among the Germans of the middle Rhine. For the attack

on Gaul attempted in the previous year the Chatti had not furnished

the promised contingent; in natural, but still far from politic, anger

the Sugambri had suddenly assailed the land of the Chatti with all

their force, and so their own territory as well as that of their

next neighbours on the Rhine was occupied without difficulty by the

Romans. The Chatti thereupon submitted to the enemies of their enemies

without resistance; nevertheless, they were directed to evacuate the

bank of the Rhine and to occupy instead of it that district which the

Sugambri had hitherto possessed. Not less did the powerful Cherusci

farther inland on the middle Weser succumb. The Chauci settled on the

lower stream were now assailed by land as they had been before by sea;

and thus the whole territory between the Rhine and Weser was taken

possession of, at least at the places of decisive military importance.

The return was, indeed, just as in the previous year, on the point

of being almost fatal; at Arbalo (site unknown) the Romans found

themselves surrounded on all sides in a narrow defile by the Germans

and deprived of their communications; but the firm discipline of the

legions, and the arrogant confidence of success withal on the part of

the Germans, changed the threatened defeat into a brilliant victory.[7]

In the next year (744) {10.} the Chatti revolted, indignant at the

loss of their old beautiful home; but now they for their part remained

alone, and were, after an obstinate resistance, and not without

considerable loss, subdued by the Romans (745) {9.}. The Marcomani on

the upper Main, who after the occupation of the territory of the Chatti

were next exposed to the attack, gave way before it, and retired into

the land of the Boii, the modern Bohemia, without interfering from

this point, where they were removed beyond the immediate sphere of

the Roman power, in the conflicts on the Rhine. In the whole region

between the Rhine and Weser the war was at an end. Drusus was able

in 745 {9.} to set foot on the right bank of the Weser in the canton

of the Cherusci, and to advance thence to the Elbe, which he did not

cross, and presumably was instructed not to do so. Several severe

combats took place; successful resistance was nowhere offered. But on

the return-march, which led apparently up the Saale and thence to

the Weser, a severe blow befell the Romans, not through the enemy but

through an incalculable misfortune. The general fell with his horse

and broke his thigh-bone; after thirty days of suffering he expired

in the distant land between the Saale and Weser,[8] which had never

before been trodden by a Roman army, in the arms of his brother who

had hastened thither from Rome, in the thirtieth year of his age and

in the full consciousness of his vigour and of his successes, long and

deeply lamented by his adherents and the whole people--perhaps to be

pronounced fortunate, because the gods granted to him to depart from

life young, and to escape the disillusions and embitterments which tell

most painfully on those highest in station, while his brilliant and

heroic figure continues still to live in the remembrance of the world.

[Sidenote: Continuance of the war by Tiberius.]

In the course of things, as a whole, the death of the able general

made--as might be expected--no change. His brother Tiberius arrived

early enough not merely to close his eyes, but also with his firm

hand to bring the army back and to carry on the conquest of Germany.

He commanded there during the two following years (746, 747) {8, 7.},

in the course of which there were no conflicts on a larger scale, but

the Roman troops showed themselves far and wide between the Rhine and

Elbe, and when Tiberius made the demand that all the countries should

formally acknowledge the Roman rule, and at the same time declared

that he could only accept that acknowledgment from all the cantons

simultaneously, they complied without exception; last of all the

Sugambri, for whom indeed there was no real peace. What progress in

a military point of view had been made, is shown by the expedition,

falling a little later, of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. The latter was

able, as governor of Illyricum, probably from Vindelicia as a basis,

to assign to a restless horde of Hermunduri settlements in the land

of the Marcomani itself; and on this expedition he reached as far as,

and beyond, the upper Elbe, without meeting with resistance.[9] The

Marcomani in Bohemia were completely isolated, and the rest of Germany

between the Rhine and Elbe was a Roman province--though still by no

means reduced to tranquillity.

[Sidenote: Camp on the left bank of the Rhine.]

Of the military-political organisation of Germany, as at that time

planned, we have but a very imperfect knowledge, because, on the

one hand, there is an utter want of accurate information as to the

arrangements made in earlier times to protect the Gallic eastern

frontier, and, on the other hand, those made by the two brothers were

in great part destroyed by the subsequent development of affairs.

There was no attempt to move the Roman frontier-guard away from the

Rhine; to this matters might perhaps come, but they had not yet done

so. Just as was the case in Illyricum at that time with the Danube,

the Elbe was doubtless the political boundary of the empire, but the

Rhine was the line of frontier-defence, and from the camps on the

Rhine the connections in rear ran to the great towns of Gaul and to

its ports.[10] The great headquarters during these campaigns was

what was afterwards named the "Old Camp," Castra vetera, (Birten near

Xanten), the first considerable height below Bonn on the left bank

of the Rhine, from a military point of view corresponding nearly to

the modern Wesel on the right. This place, occupied perhaps since

the beginning of the Roman rule on the Rhine, had been instituted by

Augustus as a stronghold for curbing Germany; and, if the fortress

was at all times the basis for the Roman defensive on the left bank

of the Rhine, it was not less well chosen for the invasion of the

right, situated, as it was, opposite to the mouth of the Lippe which

was navigable far up, and connected with the right bank by a strong

bridge. The counterpart to this "Old Camp," at the mouth of the Lippe

was probably formed by that at the mouth of the Main, Mogontiacum, the

modern Mentz, to all appearance a creation of Drusus; at least the

already mentioned cessions of territory imposed on the Chatti, as well

as the constructions in the Taunus to be mentioned further on, show

that Drusus clearly perceived the military importance of the line of

the Main, and thus also that of its key on the left bank of the Rhine.

If the legionary camp on the Aar was, as it would seem, instituted to

keep the Raeti and Vindelici to their obedience (p. 18), it may be

presumed to have been laid out about this time; but then it had merely

an outward connection with the Gallico-German military arrangements.

The legionary camp at Strassburg hardly reaches back to so early a

time. The line from Mentz to Wesel formed the basis of the Roman

military dispositions. That Drusus and Tiberius had--apart from the

Narbonese province which was then no longer imperial--the governorship

of all Gaul as well as the command of all the Rhenish legions, is an

ascertained point; apart from these princes, the civil administration

of Gaul may at that time perhaps have been separated from the command

of the troops on the Rhine, but scarcely was the latter thus early

divided into two co-ordinate commands.[11]

[Sidenote: Positions on the right bank of the Rhine.]

Correlative to these military arrangements on the left bank of the

Rhine were those adopted on the right. In the first place the Romans

took possession of the right bank itself. This step affected above all

the Sugambri, in whose case certainly retaliation for the captured

eagle and the crucified centurions contributed to it. The envoys sent

to declare their submission, the most eminent men of the nation,

were, at variance with the law of nations, treated as prisoners of

war, and perished miserably in the Italian fortresses. Of the mass of

the people, 40,000 were removed from their homes and settled in the

north of Gaul, where they subsequently, perhaps, meet us under the

name of the Cugerni. Only a small and harmless remnant of the powerful

tribe was allowed to remain in their old abodes. Suebian bands were

also transferred to Gaul, other tribes were pushed farther into the

interior, such as the Marsi and doubtless also the Chatti; on the

middle Rhine the native population of the right bank was everywhere

dislodged or at any rate weakened. Along this bank of the Rhine,

moreover, fortified posts, fifty in number, were instituted. In front

of Mogontiacum the territory taken from the Chatti, thenceforth the

canton of the Mattiaci near the modern Wiesbaden, was brought within

the Roman lines, and the height of Taunus strongly fortified.[12] But

above all the line of the Lippe was taken possession of from Vetera;

of the two military roads furnished at intervals of a day's march

with forts, on the two banks of the river, the one on the right bank

at least is as certainly the work of Drusus as the fortress of Aliso

in the district of the sources of the Lippe, probably the present

village of Elsen, not far from Paderborn,[13] is attested to have been

so. Moreover, there was the already mentioned canal from the mouth

of the Rhine to the Zuider See, and a dyke drawn by Lucius Domitius

Ahenobarbus through the marshy flat country between the Ems and the

lower Rhine--the so-called "long bridges." Besides, there were detached

Roman posts scattered through the whole region; such are subsequently

mentioned among the Frisians and the Chauci, and in this sense it may

be correct that the Roman garrisons reached as far as the Weser and

the Elbe. Lastly, the army encamped in winter, no doubt, on the Rhine;

but in summer, even though no expeditions properly so called were

undertaken, uniformly in the conquered country, as a rule near Aliso.

[Sidenote: Organisation of the province Germany.]

The Romans, however, did not make mere military arrangements in the

newly acquired domain. The Germans were urged, like other provincials,

to have law administered to them by the Roman governor, and the summer

expeditions of the general gradually developed into the usual judicial

circuits of the governor. The accusation and defence of the accused

took place in the Latin language; the Roman advocates and legal

assessors began, on the right as on the left side of the Rhine, their

operations, sorely felt everywhere, but here deeply exasperating to

the barbarians, who were unaccustomed to such things. Much was lacking

to the full carrying out of the provincial organisation; a formal

assessment of taxation, a regulated levy for the Roman army, were not

yet thought of. But as the new cantonal union had just been instituted

in Gaul in connection with the divine adoration of the monarch there

introduced, a similar arrangement was made also in the new Germany.

When Drusus consecrated for Gaul the altar of Augustus at Lyons, the

Germans last settled on the left bank of the Rhine, the Ubii, were not

received into this union; but in their chief place, which, as regards

position, was for Germany nearly what Lyons was for the three Gauls, a

similar altar for the Germanic cantons was erected, the priesthood of

which was, in the year 9, administered by the young Cheruscan prince

Segimundus, son of Segestes.

[Sidenote: Retirement of Tiberius from the chief command.]

Political differences, however, in the imperial family broke down or

interrupted the full military success. The discord between Tiberius and

his stepfather led to the former resigning the command in the beginning

of 748 {6.}. The dynastic interest did not allow comprehensive

military operations to be entrusted to other generals than princes

of the imperial house; and after the death of Agrippa and Drusus,

and the retirement of Tiberius, there were no able generals in that

house. Certainly in the ten years, when governors with the ordinary

powers bore sway in Illyricum and in Germany, the military operations

there may not have undergone so complete an interruption as they

appear to us to have done, seeing that tradition, with its courtly

colouring, does not in its report deal out equal measure to campaigns

conducted by, and to those conducted without, princes; but the arrest

laid on them was unmistakable, and this itself was a retrogression.

Ahenobarbus, who, in consequence of his alliance by marriage with the

imperial house--his wife was the daughter of a sister of Augustus--had

greater freedom of action than other officers, and who in his Illyrian

governorship had crossed the Elbe without encountering resistance,

afterwards as governor of Germany reaped no laurels there. Not merely

the exasperation, but the courage also, of the Germans was again

rising, and in the year 2 the country appears again in revolt, the

Cherusci and the Chauci under arms. Meanwhile at the imperial court

death had interposed, and the removal of the young sons of Augustus had

reconciled the latter and Tiberius.

[Sidenote: Tiberius once more commander in chief.]

Scarcely was this reconciliation sealed by his adoption as a son and

proclaimed (4), when Tiberius resumed the work where it had been broken

off, and once more in this and in the two following summers (5-6) led

the armies over the Rhine. It was a repetition of, and an advance upon,

the earlier campaigns. The Cherusci were brought back to allegiance

in the first campaign, the Chauci in the second; the Cannenefates,

adjoining the Batavi, and not inferior in bravery, the Bructeri,

settled in the region of the sources of the Lippe and on the Ems, and

various other cantons, submitted, as did also the powerful Langobardi,

here first mentioned, dwelling at that time between the Weser and Elbe.

The first campaign led over the Weser into the interior; in the second

at the Elbe itself the Roman legions confronted the Germanic general

levy on the other bank. From the year 4 to 5 the Roman army took up,

apparently for the first time, its winter quarters on German soil at

Aliso. All this was attained without any considerable conflicts; the

circumspect conduct of the war did not break resistance, but made it

impossible. This general aimed, not at unfruitful laurels, but at

lasting success. The naval expedition, too, was repeated; like the

first campaign of Drusus, the last of Tiberius was distinguished by the

navigating of the North Sea. But the Roman fleet this time advanced

farther; the whole coast of the North Sea, as far as the promontory of

the Cimbri, that is, the extremity of Jutland, was explored by it, and

it then, sailing up the Elbe, joined the land-army stationed on the

latter. The emperor had expressly forbidden the crossing of the river;

but the tribes beyond the Elbe--the Cimbri just named, in what is now

Jutland, the Charudes to the south of them, the powerful Semnones

between the Elbe and the Oder--were brought at least into relation to

the new neighbours.

[Sidenote: Campaign against Maroboduus.]

It might have been thought that the goal was reached. But one thing

was still wanting to the establishment of the iron ring which was to

surround the Great Germany; it was the establishment of a connection

between the middle Danube and the upper Elbe--the occupation of the old

home of the Boii, which with its mountain-cincture planted itself like

a gigantic fortress between Noricum and Germany. The king Maroboduus,

of noble Marcomanian lineage, but in his youth by prolonged residence

in Rome introduced to its firmer military and political organisation,

had after his return home--perhaps during the first campaign of Drusus

and the transmigration, thereby brought about, of the Marcomani from

the Main to the upper Elbe--not merely raised himself to be prince of

his people, but had also moulded his rule not after the loose fashion

of the Germanic kings, but, one might say, after the model of the

Augustan. Besides his own people, he ruled over the powerful tribe of

the Lugii (in what is now Silesia), and the body of his clients must

have extended over the whole region of the Elbe, as the Langobardi

and the Semnones are described as subject to him. Hitherto he had

observed entire neutrality in presence of the other Germans as of

the Romans. He gave perhaps to the fugitive enemies of the Romans an

asylum in his country, but he did not actively mingle in the strife,

not even when the Hermunduri had settlements assigned to them by the

Roman governor on Marcomanian territory (p. 31), and when the left

bank of the Elbe became subject to the Romans. He did not submit to

them, but he bore all these occurrences without interrupting, on that

account, his friendly relations with the Romans. By this certainly not

magnanimous and scarce even so much as prudent policy, he had gained

this much, that he was the last to be attacked; after the completely

successful Germanic campaigns in the years 4 and 5 his turn came. From

two sides--from Germany and Noricum--the Roman armies advanced against

the Bohemian mountain-circle; Gaius Sentius Saturninus, advanced up the

Main, clearing the dense forests from Spessart to the Fichtelgebirge

with axe and fire; while Tiberius in person, starting from Carnuntum,

where the Illyrian legions had encamped during the winter of the years

5-6, advanced against the Marcomani. The two armies, amounting together

to twelve legions, were even in number so superior as almost to double

that of their opponents, whose fighting force was estimated at 70,000

infantry and 4000 horsemen. The cautious strategy of the general seemed

on this occasion also to have quite ensured success, when a sudden

incident interrupted the farther advance of the Romans.

[Sidenote: Dalmato-Pannonian insurrection.]

The Dalmatian tribes and the Pannonians, at least of the region of the

Save, for a short time obeyed the Roman governors; but they bore the

new rule with an ever increasing grudge, above all on account of the

taxes, to which they were unaccustomed, and which were relentlessly

exacted. When Tiberius subsequently asked one of the leaders as to the

grounds of the revolt, he answered that it had taken place because the

Romans set not dogs and shepherds, but wolves, to guard their flocks.

Now the legions from Dalmatia were brought to the Danube, and the

men capable of arms were called out, in order to be sent thither to

reinforce the armies. These troops made a beginning, and took up arms

not for, but against, Rome. Their leader was one of the Daesitiatae

(around Serajevo), Bato. The example was followed by the Pannonians,

under the leadership of two Breuci, another Bato and Pinnes. All

Illyricum rose with unheard of rapidity and unanimity. The number

of the insurgent forces was estimated at 200,000 infantry and 9000

horsemen. The levy for the auxiliary troops, which had taken place more

especially among the Pannonians to a considerable extent, had diffused

more widely a knowledge of Roman warfare, along with the Roman language

and even Roman culture. Those who had served as Roman soldiers formed

now the nucleus of the insurrection.[14] The Roman citizens settled or

sojourning in large number in the insurgent regions, the merchants,

and above all, the soldiers, were everywhere seized and slain. The

independent tribes, as well as those of the provinces, entered into the

movement. The princes of the Thracians, entirely devoted to the Romans,

certainly brought their considerable and brave bands to the aid of the

Roman generals; but from the other bank of the Danube the Dacians, and

with them the Sarmatae, broke into Moesia. The whole wide region of the

Danube seemed to have conspired to put an abrupt end to the foreign

rule.