THE DANUBIAN LANDS AND THE WARS ON THE DANUBE.
[Sidenote: Arrangements of Augustus.]
As the frontier on the Rhine was the work of Caesar, so the frontier
on the Danube was the work of Augustus. When he came to the helm, the
Romans were in the Italian peninsula hardly masters of the Alps, and
in the Greek peninsula hardly masters of the Haemus (Balkan) and of
the coast districts along the Adriatic and the Black Sea; nowhere did
their territory reach the mighty stream which separates southern from
northern Europe. As well northern Italy as the Illyrian and Pontic
commercial towns, and still more the civilised provinces of Macedonia
and Thrace, were constantly exposed to the predatory expeditions of
the rude and restless neighbouring tribes. When Augustus died there
were substituted for the one province of Illyricum, which had barely
attained to independent administration, five great Roman administrative
districts, Raetia, Noricum, Lower Illyria or Pannonia, Upper Illyria
or Dalmatia, and Moesia; and the Danube became in its whole course,
if not everywhere the military, at any rate the political, frontier
of the empire. The comparatively easy subjugation of these wide
territories, as well as the grave insurrection of the years 6-9, and
the abandonment, thereby occasioned, of the formerly cherished purpose
of shifting the boundary-line from the upper Danube to Bohemia and to
the Elbe, have been formerly described. It remains that we should set
forth the development of these provinces in the time after Augustus and
the relations of the Romans to the tribes dwelling beyond the Danube.
[Sidenote: Late civilisation in Raetia.]
The destinies of Raetia were so closely interwoven with those of the
upper German province that we might refer for them to the earlier
narrative. Roman civilisation here, taken as a whole, underwent but
little development. The highlands of the Alps with the valleys of the
upper Inn and the upper Rhine embraced a weak and peculiar population,
probably the same as had once possessed the eastern half of the
north-Italian plain, perhaps akin to the Etruscans. Driven back thence
by the Celts, and perhaps also by the Illyrici, it held its ground
in the northern mountains. While the valleys opening to the south,
like that of the Adige, were attached to Italy, these offered to the
southerns little room and still less incitement for settlement and
founding of towns. Farther northward on the plateau between the lake
of Constance and the Inn, which was occupied by the Celtic tribes of
the Vindelici, there would doubtless have been room and place for Roman
culture; but apparently in this region, which could not become, like
the Norican, an immediate continuation of Italy, and which, like the
adjacent so-called Decumates-land, was probably in the first instance
of value for the Romans merely as separating them from the Germans, the
policy of the earlier imperial period had rather repressed culture.
We have already indicated (p. 18) that immediately after the conquest
there were thoughts of depopulating the district. Alongside of this
lies the fact, that in the earlier imperial period no community with
Roman organisation originated here. It is true that the founding of
Augusta Vindelicorum, the modern Augsburg, was a necessary part of
the laying out of the great road which was carried, simultaneously
with the conquest itself, by the elder Drusus through the high Alps
to the Danube (pp. 19, 20); but this rapidly flourishing place was,
and remained for above a century, a market-village, till at length
Hadrian in this respect left the path prescribed by Augustus and made
the land of the Vindelici share in the Romanising of the north. The
bestowal of Roman urban rights on the chief place of the Vindelici by
Hadrian may be connected with the fact that, nearly about the same
time, the military frontier was pushed forward on the upper Rhine,
and Roman towns arose in the former Decumates-land; nevertheless in
Raetia ever afterwards Augusta remained the only larger centre of
Roman civilisation. The military arrangements exercised an influence
in keeping it back. The province was from the first under imperial
administration, and could not be left without a garrison; but special
considerations, as we have formerly shown, compelled the government to
send to Raetia simply troops of the second class, and, though these
were not inconsiderable in number, the smaller headquarters of _alae_
and _cohortes_ could not have exercised a civilising and town-forming
effect like the camp of the legion. Under Marcus certainly, in
consequence of the Marcomanian war, the Raetian headquarters, Castra
Regina, the modern Ratisbon, was occupied by a legion; but even this
place appears to have remained in the Roman time a mere military
settlement, and hardly to have stood on a line in urban development
with the camps of second rank on the Rhine, such as _e.g._ Bonna.
[Sidenote: The Raetian Limes.]
That the frontier of Raetia was already in Trajan's time pushed forward
from Ratisbon westward some distance beyond the Danube, has already
been observed (p. 158); and it has been there also shown that this
territory was probably annexed to the empire without applying force
of arms, similarly with the Decumates-land. It was likewise already
mentioned that the fortifying of this territory was perhaps connected
with the incursions of the Chatti extending thus far under Marcus, as
also that these and subsequently the Alamanni in the third century
visited as well this country in front as Raetia itself, and ultimately
under Gallienus wrested it from the Romans.
[Sidenote: The Italising of Noricum.]
The neighbouring province of Noricum was doubtless in the provincial
arrangement treated similarly to Raetia, but in other respects had
a different development. In no direction was Italy so open for
land-traffic as towards the north-east; the commercial relations of
Aquileia, as well through Friuli with the upper Danube and with the
iron-works of Noreia, as over the Julian Alps with the valley of the
Save, here paved the way for the Augustan extension of the frontier as
nowhere else in the region of the Danube. Nauportus (Upper Laybach)
beyond the pass was a Roman trading village already in the time of the
republic; Emona (Laybach), a Roman burgess-colony, afterwards formally
incorporated with Italy, but substantially belonging to Italy from
the time of its foundation by Augustus. Hence, as has already been
noticed (p. 18), the mere proclamation was probably enough for the
conversion of this "kingdom" into a Roman province. The population,
originally doubtless Illyrian, afterwards in good part Celtic, shows
no trace of that adherence to the national ways and language which we
perceive among the Celts of the west. Roman language and Roman manners
must have found early entrance here; and by the emperor Claudius the
whole territory, even the northern portion separated by the Tauern
chain from the valley of the Drave, was organised in accordance with
the Italian municipal constitution. While in the neighbouring lands of
Raetia and Pannonia the monuments of Roman language are either wanting
or appear withal only at the larger centres, the valleys of the Drave,
the Mur, and the Salzach and their affluents are filled far up into the
mountains with evidences of the Romanising which here took deep hold.
Noricum adjoined, and was as it were a part of, Italy; in the levy for
the legions and for the guard, so long as the Italians were here at all
preferred, this preference was extended to no other province so fully
as to this.
As respects military occupation what applies to Raetia applies also
to Noricum. For the reasons already developed there were in Noricum,
during the first two centuries of the empire, only forts of _alae_ and
_cohortes_. Carnuntum (Petronell, near Vienna), which in the Augustan
age belonged to Noricum, was, when the Illyrian legions were sent
thither, annexed for that very reason to Pannonia. The smaller Norican
encampments on the Danube, and even the camp of Lauriacum (near Enns),
instituted by Marcus for the legion sent by him to this province, were
of no importance for the urban development. The large townships of
Noricum, such as Celeia (Cilli), in the valley of the Sann, Aguontum
(Lienz), Teurnia (not far from Spital), Virunum (Zollfeld, near
Klagenfurt), in the north Juvavum (Salzburg), originated purely out of
civil elements.
[Sidenote: The Illyrian stock.]
Illyricum, that is the Roman territory between Italy and Macedonia,
was in the republican time united, as to its lesser portion, with the
Graeco-Macedonian governorship, as to its greater, administered as a
land adjacent to Italy, and, after the institution of the governorship
of Cisalpine Gaul, as a portion of the latter. The territory coincides
to a certain degree with the widely diffused stock from which the
Romans named it; it is the same whose scanty remnant still at the
present day, at the southern end of its formerly far-extended
possessions, has preserved its own nationality and its old language
under the name of Skipetars, which they assign to themselves, or, as
their neighbours call them, the Arnauts or Albanians. It is a member
of the Indo-Germanic family, and within it doubtless most closely akin
to the Greek branch, as is in keeping with its local relations; but it
stands by the side of the Greek at least as independent as the Latin
and the Celtic. This nation in its original extent filled the coast of
the Adriatic Sea from the mouth of the Po through Istria, Dalmatia,
and Epirus, as far as Acarnania and Aetolia, and also in the interior
upper Macedonia, as well as the modern Servia and Bosnia and the
Hungarian territory on the right bank of the Danube; it bordered thus
on the east with the Thracian tribes, on the west with the Celtic, from
which latter Tacitus expressly distinguishes them. It is a vigorous
type of a southern kind, with black hair and dark eyes, very different
from the Celts, and still more from the Germans; sober, temperate,
intrepid, proud people, excellent soldiers, but little accessible to
civic organisation, shepherds more than agriculturists. They did not
attain any great political development. On the Italian coast they were
confronted probably, in the first instance, by the Celts; the probably
Illyrian tribes there, especially the Veneti, became, through rivalry
with the Celts, at an early date pliant subjects of the Romans.
[Sidenote: Its relations with Rome.]
At the end of the sixth century of the city the founding of Aquileia
and the subjugation of the peninsula of Istria (ii. 207 f.) {ii. 196.}
farther narrowed their limits. Along the east coast of the Adriatic Sea
the more important islands and the southern harbours of the mainland
had long been occupied by the bold Hellenic mariners. When thereupon
in Scodra (Scutari), to a certain extent in olden time as now the
central point of the Illyrian land, the rulers began to develop a
power of their own, and especially to make war upon the Greeks at
sea, Rome, even before the Hannibalic war, struck them down with a
strong hand, and took the whole coast under its protectorate (ii. 77
f.) {ii. 74 f.}, which soon, after the ruler of Scodra had shared war
and defeat with king Perseus of Macedonia, brought about the complete
dissolution of this principality (ii. 321) {ii. 303.}. At the end of
the sixth century of the city, and in the first half of the seventh,
after long years of conflict, the coast between Istria and Scodra
was also occupied by the Romans (iii. 180 f.) {iii. 172.}. In the
interior the Illyrians were little touched by the Romans during the
republican period; but instead the Celts, advancing from the west,
must have brought under their power a good portion of originally
Illyrian territory, such as Noricum, afterwards preponderantly Celtic.
The Latobici also in the modern Carniola were Celts; and in the whole
territory between the Save and Drave, just as in the Raab valley, the
two great stocks were settled promiscuously, when Caesar Augustus
subjected the southern districts of Pannonia to the Roman rule.
Probably this strong admixture of Celtic elements contributed its part,
along with the level character of the ground, to the early decline
of the Illyrian nation in the Pannonian districts. Into the southern
half, on the other hand, of the regions inhabited by Illyrians there
penetrated of the Celts only the Scordisci, whose establishment on
the lower Save as far as Morava, and raids as far as the vicinity of
Thessalonica, have been formerly mentioned (iii. 184 f.) {iii. 176 f.}.
But the Greeks here gave place to them in some measure; the sinking of
the Macedonian power, and the desolation of Epirus and Aetolia, must
have favoured the extension of the Illyrian neighbours. Bosnia, Servia,
above all Albania, were in the imperial period Illyrian, and Albania is
so still.
[Sidenote: The province of Illyricum.]
It has already been mentioned that Illyricum was, according to
the design of the dictator Caesar, to be constituted as a special
governorship, and this design came into execution on the partition of
the provinces between Augustus and the senate; that this governorship,
at first committed to the senate, passed to the emperor on account of
the need for waging war there; that Augustus divided this governorship
and rendered effective the rule, which hitherto on the whole had been
but nominal, over the interior both in Dalmatia and in the region of
the Save; and, lastly, that he subdued, after a severe struggle of
four years, the mighty national insurrection which broke out among the
Dalmatian as among the Pannonian Illyrians in the year 6. It remains
that we relate the further fortunes, in the first instance, of the
southern province.
[Sidenote: Dalmatia and its Italian civilisation.]
[Sidenote: Salonae.]
After the experience attained in the insurrection it seemed requisite
not merely to employ the forces raised in Illyricum abroad rather than
as hitherto in their native country, but also to keep in subordination
the Dalmatians as well as the Pannonians by a command of the first
rank. This rapidly fulfilled its object. The resistance, which the
Illyrici under Augustus opposed to the unwonted foreign rule, expended
its rage in the one violent storm; afterwards our reports record no
similar movement, even of but a partial kind. For the southern or,
according to the Roman expression, the Upper Illyricum--the province
Dalmatia, as it was usually called from the time of the Flavii--a new
epoch began with the government of the emperors. The Greek merchants
had indeed founded on the coast lying nearest to them the two great
emporia of Apollonia (near Valona) and Dyrrachium (Durazzo); for
that very reason this portion had already under the republic been
consigned to Greek administration. But farther northward the Hellenes
had settled only on the adjacent islands Issa (Lissa), Pharos (Lesina),
Black-Corcyra (Curzola), and thence maintained intercourse with the
natives particularly along the coast of Narona and in the townships
adjacent to Salonae. Under the Roman republic the Italian traders, who
here entered upon the heritage of the Greek, had settled in the chief
ports Epitaurum (Ragusa Vecchia), Narona, Salonae, Iader (Zara), in
such numbers that they could play a not unimportant part in the war
of Caesar and Pompeius. But it was only through Augustus that these
townships received strengthening by the settlement of veterans there,
and--what was the main thing--urban rights; and at the same time partly
the energetic suppression of the piratic retreats still existing in the
islands, partly the subjugation of the interior and the pushing forward
of the Roman frontier towards the Danube, tended to benefit especially
these Italians settled on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea. Above
all the capital of the country, the seat of the governor and of the
whole administration, Salonae rapidly flourished and far outstripped
the older Greek settlements Apollonia and Dyrrachium, although to
the latter town there were sent likewise under Augustus Italian
colonists, not indeed veterans but dispossessed Italians, and the
town was erected as a Roman burgess-community. It may be conjectured
that in the prosperity of Dalmatia and the arrested development of
the Illyro-Macedonian coast the distinction between the imperial and
the senatorial government played an essential part--as regards better
administration, as well as a privileged position with the real holder
of power. With this, moreover, may be connected the fact, that the
Illyrian nationality held its ground better in the sphere of the
Macedonian governorship than in that of the Dalmatian; in the former
it still lives at the present day; and in the imperial period--apart
from the Greek Apollonia and the Italian colony of Dyrrachium--while
the two languages of the empire were made use of, in the interior that
of the people must have continued to be the Illyrian. In Dalmatia, on
the other hand, the coasts and the islands, so far as they were at all
adapted thereto--the inhospitable stretch to the north of the Iader
necessarily was left behind in the development--were communalised
after the Italian organisation, and soon the whole coast spoke Latin,
somewhat as it speaks at the present day Venetian.
[Sidenote: Civilisation in the interior.]
The advance of civilisation into the interior had to encounter local
difficulties. The considerable streams of Dalmatia form waterfalls
more than water-ways; and even the establishment of land-routes
meets unusual difficulties from the nature of its mountain-network.
The Roman government made earnest exertions to open up the country.
Under the protection of the legionary camp of Burnum in the valley
of the Kerka and in that of Cettina under the protection of the camp
of Delminium--which camps must have been here too the channels of
civilisation and of Latinising--the cultivation of the soil developed
itself after the Italian fashion, as also the planting of the vine
and the olive, and in general Italian organisation and habits. On the
other hand, beyond the watershed between the Adriatic Sea and the
Danube the valleys less favourable for agriculture from the Kulpa to
the Drin remained during the Roman period in a primitive state, similar
to that exhibited by Bosnia at the present day. The emperor Tiberius
certainly had various roads made by the soldiers of the Dalmatian camps
from Salonae into the valleys of Bosnia; but the later governments
apparently allowed the difficult task to drop. On the coast and in the
districts adjoining the coast Dalmatia soon needed no further military
protection; Vespasian could already withdraw the legions from the
valleys of the Kerka and the Cettina and employ them elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Prosperity under Diocletian.]
Amidst the decay of the empire in the third century Dalmatia suffered
comparatively little; indeed, Salonae probably only reached at that
time its greatest prosperity. This, it is true, was occasioned partly
by the fact that the regenerator of the Roman state, the emperor
Diocletian, was by birth a Dalmatian, and allowed his efforts aimed
at the decapitalising of Rome to redound chiefly to the benefit of the
capital of his native land; he built alongside of it the huge palace,
from which the modern capital of the province takes the name Spalato,
within which it has for the most part found a place, and the temples
of which now serve it as cathedral and as baptistery.[118] Diocletian,
however, did not make Salonae a great city for the first time, but,
because it was such, chose it for his private residence; commerce,
navigation, and trade must at that time in these waters have been
concentrated chiefly at Aquileia and at Salonae, and the city must
have been one of the most populous and opulent towns of the west. The
rich iron mines of Bosnia were largely worked at least in the later
imperial period; the forests of the province likewise yielded abundant
and excellent timber; even of the flourishing textile industry of the
land a reminiscence is still preserved in the priestly "Dalmatica."
Altogether the civilising and Romanising of Dalmatia form one of the
most peculiar and most significant phenomena of the imperial period.
The boundary between Dalmatia and Macedonia was at the same time the
political and linguistic demarcation of the West and East. As the
spheres of rule of Caesar and Marcus Antonius came into contact at
Scodra, so did those of Rome and Byzantium after the partition of the
empire in the fourth century. Here the Latin province of Dalmatia
bordered with the Greek province of Macedonia; and the younger sister
stands here alongside of the elder, vigorous in aspiration and
excelling in energy of effort.
[Sidenote: Pannonia down to Trajan.]
While the southern Illyrian province and its peaceful government soon
ceased to be prominent in a historical aspect, northern Illyricum,
or as it is usually called, Pannonia, forms in the imperial period
one of the great military and thereby also political centres. In the
army of the Danube the Pannonian camps have the leading position like
the Rhenish in the west, and the Dalmatian and the Moesian attach
themselves to them, and subordinate themselves under them, in like
manner as the legions of Spain and Britain were subordinate to those
of the Rhine. Roman civilisation stands and continues here under
the influence of the camps, which did not remain in Pannonia as in
Dalmatia only for some generations, but were permanent. After the
subduing of the insurrection of Bato, the regular garrison of the
province amounted at first to three, afterwards apparently only to two,
legions; and the further development was conditioned by their standing
quarters and the shifting of these forward. When Augustus after the
first war against the Dalmatians had selected Siscia, at the point
where the Kulpa falls into the Save, as his chief stronghold, after
Tiberius had subdued Pannonia at least as far as the Drave, the camps
were pushed forward to the latter, and at least one of the Pannonian
headquarters was thenceforth found at Poetovio (Pettau), on the borders
of Noricum. The reason why the Pannonian army remained wholly or in
part in the valley of the Drave can only have been the same as led to
the construction of the Dalmatian legionary camps; they needed troops
here to keep in obedience their subjects as well in the neighbouring
Noricum as above all in the region of the Drave itself. On the Danube
watch was kept by the Roman fleet, which is already mentioned in the
year 50, and presumably originated on the erection of the province.
There was not yet perhaps a legionary camp on the river itself under
the Julio-Claudian dynasty,[119] in connection with which we may
note that the state of the Suebi immediately adjoining the province
in front was at that time immediately dependent on Rome, and sufficed
in some measure to protect the frontier. Then, as with the camps of
Dalmatia, Vespasian apparently did away also with the camps on the
Drave and transferred them to the Danube itself; thenceforth the great
headquarters of the Pannonian army were the formerly Norican (p.
198) Carnuntum (Petronell, to the east of Vienna), and along with it
Vindobona (Vienna).
[Sidenote: Urban development.]
Civil development, such as we meet in Noricum and on the coast of
Dalmatia, shows itself likewise in Pannonia only at some districts
situated on the Norican frontier, and in part belonging originally
to Noricum; Emona and the upper valley of the Save stand on an
equality with Noricum, and if Savaria (Stein, on the Anger) received
the Italian municipal constitution at the same time with the Norican
towns, that place must doubtless, so long as Carnuntum was a Norican
town, have belonged also to Noricum. It was only after the troops were
stationed on the Danube that the government set to work to give urban
organisation to the country behind. In the western territory originally
Norican, Scarbantia (Oedenburg, on the Neusiedler See) obtained urban
rights under the Flavii, while Vindobona and Carnuntum became of
themselves camp-towns. Between the Save and Drave Siscia and Sirmium
received urban rights under the Flavii, as on the Drave Poetovio
(Pettau) under Trajan, Mursa (Eszeg) under Hadrian colonial rights--to
mention here only the chief places. That the population, predominantly
Illyrian but in good part also Celtic, opposed no energetic resistance
to the Romanising, has already been mentioned; the old language and the
old habits disappeared where the Romans came, and kept their ground
only in the more remote districts. The districts--wide, but far from
inviting for settlement--to the east of the river Raab and to the
north of the Drave as far as the Danube were probably reckoned even
from the time of Augustus as belonging to the empire, but perhaps in a
way not much differing from Germany before the battle of Varus; urban
development neither then nor later found a true soil here, and in a
military point of view this region was for a long time occupied but
little or not at all. This state of matters changed in some measure
only in consequence of the incorporation of Dacia under Trajan; the
pushing forward of the Pannonian camps towards the east frontier of the
province, to which that step gave occasion, and the further internal
development of Pannonia, will be better described in connection with
the wars of Trajan.
[Sidenote: The Thracian stock.]
The last portion of the right bank of the Danube--the mountain-land on
the two sides of the Margus (Morava), and the flat country stretching
along between the Haemus and the Danube--was inhabited by Thracian
tribes; and it appears necessary in the first instance to cast a glance
at this great stock as such. It runs parallel in a certain sense to the
Illyrian. As the Illyrians once filled the regions from the Adriatic
Sea to the middle Danube, so the Thracians were formerly settled to
the east of them, from the Aegean Sea as far as the mouths of the
Danube, and not less on the one hand upon the left bank of the Danube,
particularly in the modern Transylvania, on the other hand beyond the
Bosporus, at least in Bithynia and as far as Phrygia. Herodotus is not
wrong in calling the Thracians the greatest of the peoples known to him
after the Indians. Like the Illyrian, the Thracian stock attained to
no full development, and appears more as hard-pressed and dispossessed
than as having any historically memorable course of its own. But, while
the language and habits of the Illyrians have been preserved--though
in a form worn down in the course of centuries--to the present day,
and we with some right transfer the image of the Palikars from more
recent history to that of the Roman imperial period, the same does not
hold good of the Thracian stock. There is manifold and sure attestation
that the tribes of the territory, which in consequence of the Roman
provincial division has ultimately retained the name Thracian, as well
as the Moesians between the Balkan and the Danube, and not less the
Getae or Daci on the other bank of the Danube, all spoke one and the
same language. This language had in the Roman empire a position similar
to that of the Celts and of the Syrians. The historian and geographer
of the Augustan age, Strabo, mentions the likeness of language among
the peoples named; in botanical writings of the imperial period the
Dacian appellations of a number of plants are specified.[120] When
his contemporary, the poet Ovid, had opportunity given to him in the
far-off Dobrudscha to reflect on his too dissolute course of life,
he used his leisure to learn Getic, and became almost a poet of the
Getae:--
_Ah pudet! et Getico scripsi sermone libellum....
Et placui (gratare mihi) coepique poetae
Inter inhumanos nomen habere Getas._
But while the Irish bards, the Syrian missionaries, and the mountain
valleys of Albania secured a certain continued duration for other
idioms of the imperial period, the Thracian disappeared amidst
the fluctuations of peoples in the region of the Danube and the
overpowerful influence of Constantinople, and we cannot even determine
the place which belongs to it in the pedigree of nations. The
descriptions of manners and customs of particular tribes belonging
to it, as to which various notices have been preserved, yield no
individual traits valid for the race as a whole, and for the most
part bring into relief merely singularities such as appear among
all peoples at a low stage of culture. But they were and remained a
soldier-people, not less useful as horsemen than for light infantry,
from the times of the Peloponnesian war and of Alexander down to
that of the Roman Caesars, whether they might range themselves
against them or subsequently fight for them. Their wild but grand
mode of worshipping the gods may perhaps be conceived as a trait
peculiar to this stock--the mighty outburst of the joy of spring and
youth, the nocturnal mountain-festivals of torch-swinging maidens,
the intoxicating sense-confusing music, the flowing of wine and the
flowing of blood, the giddy festal whirl frantic with the simultaneous
excitement of all sensuous passions. Dionysos, the glorious and the
terrible, was a Thracian god; and whatever of the kind was specially
prominent in the Hellenic and the Roman _cultus_, was connected with
Thracian or Phrygian customs.
[Sidenote: The Thracian principate.]
While the Illyrian tribes in Dalmatia and Pannonia, after the overthrow
of the great insurrection in the last years of Augustus, did not again
invoke the decision of arms against the Romans, the same did not hold
true of the Thracian stock; the often-shown spirit of independence
and the wild bravery of this nation did not fail it even in its
decline. In Thrace, south of the Haemus, the old principate remained
under Roman supremacy. The native ruling house of the Odrysae, with
their residence Bizye (Wiza), between Adrianople and the coast of the
Black Sea, was already in the earlier period the most prominent among
the princely families of Thrace; after the triumviral period there
is no further mention of other Thracian kings than of those of this
house, so that the other princes appear to have been made vassals
or superseded under Augustus, and only members of this family were
thenceforth invested with the Thracian kingly office. This was done,
probably, because during the first century, as will be shown further
on, there were no Roman legions stationed on the lower Danube; Augustus
expected the frontier at the mouth of the Danube to be protected by the
Thracian vassals. Rhoemetalces, who in the second half of the reign
of Augustus ruled all Thrace as a Roman vassal-king,[121] and his
children and grandchildren therefore played in this country nearly
the same part as Herod and his descendants in Palestine; unconditional
devotedness towards the lord-paramount, a decided inclination to Roman
habits, hostility to their own countrymen who clung to the national
independence, mark the attitude of the Thracian ruling house. The great
Thracian insurrection of the years 741-743, of which we have formerly
spoken (p. 24), was directed in the first instance against this
Rhoemetalces and his brother and co-regent Cotys who perished in it,
and, as he at that time was indebted to the Romans for reinstatement
into his dominion, so he some years afterwards rendered to them his
thanks when, on occasion of the rising of the Dalmatians and the
Pannonians, to which his Dacian kinsmen adhered, he kept faithfully
to the Romans, and bore an essential part in its overthrow. His son
Cotys was more Roman, or rather Greek, than Thracian; he traced back
his pedigree to Eumolpus and Erichthonius, and gained the hand of
a kinswoman of the imperial house, the great granddaughter of the
triumvir Antonius; and not merely did the Greek and Latin poets of his
time address him in song, but he himself was also a poet and not a
Getic poet.[122] The last of the Thracian kings, Rhoemetalces, son of
the early deceased Cotys, was reared in Rome, and, like the Herodian
Agrippa, a youthful playmate of the emperor Gaius.
[Sidenote: Province of Thrace.]
But the Thracian nation by no means shared the Roman leanings of the
ruling house, and the government gradually became convinced in Thrace
as in Palestine that the tottering vassal-throne, only maintained by
constant interference of the protecting power, was of use neither
for them nor for the country, and that the introduction of direct
administration was in every respect to be preferred. The emperor
Tiberius made use of the quarrels that arose in the Thracian royal
house to send to Thrace in the year 19 a Roman governor, Titus
Trebellenus Rufus, under cover of exercising guardianship over the
princes that were minors. Yet this occupation was not accomplished
without resistance, ineffectual doubtless, but serious on the part
of the people, who, particularly in the mountain-valleys, troubled
themselves little about the rulers appointed by Rome, and whose
forces, led by their family-chiefs, hardly felt themselves to be
soldiers of the king, and still less soldiers of Rome. The sending of
Trebellenus called forth in the year 21 a rising, in which not merely
did the most noted Thracian tribes take part, but which threatened to
assume greater proportions; messengers of the insurgents went over
the Haemus to enkindle the national war in Moesia, and perhaps still
further. Meanwhile the Moesian legions appeared in right time to
relieve Philippopolis, which the insurgents besieged, and to suppress
the movement. But, when some years later (25) the Roman government
ordered levies in Thrace, the men refused to serve beyond the bounds
of their own country. When no regard was paid to this refusal, the
whole mountains rose and a struggle of despair ensued, in which
the insurgents, constrained at length by hunger and thirst, threw
themselves in great part on the swords of the enemy or on their own,
and preferred to renounce life rather than their time-honoured freedom.
The direct government continued in the form of exercising wardship in
Thrace up to the death of Tiberius; and, if the emperor Gaius at the
commencement of his reign gave back the rule to the Thracian friend of
his youth just as to the Jewish, a few years after, in the year 46,
the government of Claudius definitely put an end to it. This final
annexation of the kingdom, and conversion of it into a Roman province,
also encountered an equally hopeless and equally obstinate resistance.
But with the introduction of direct administration the resistance
was broken. The governor, at first of equestrian, and from Trajan's
time of senatorial, rank, never had a legion; the garrison sent into
the country, though it was not stronger than 2000 men, along with a
small squadron stationed at Perinthus, was sufficient, in connection
with the precautionary measures otherwise taken by the government, to
keep down the Thracians. The laying out of military roads was begun
immediately after the annexation; we find that the buildings requisite
in the state of the country for the accommodation of travellers at
the posting stations were already, in the year 61, erected by the
government and opened to traffic. Thrace was thenceforth an obedient
and important province of the empire; hardly any other furnished so
numerous men for all parts of the war-forces, especially for the
cavalry and the fleet, as this old home of gladiators and of mercenary
soldiers.
[Sidenote: Moesia.]
The serious conflicts which the Romans had to sustain with the same
nation on the so-called "Thracian shore" [Ripa Thraciae], in the region
between the Balkan and the Danube, and which led to the institution
of the Moesian command, form an essential constituent part of the
regulation of the northern frontier in the Augustan age, and have been
already described in their connection (p. 13 f). Of resistance similar
to that offered by the Thracians to the Romans nothing is reported from
Moesia; the tone of feeling there may not have been different, but in
the level country and under the pressure of the legions encamped at
Viminacium the resistance did not emerge openly.
[Sidenote: Hellenism and Romanism in Thrace.]
Civilisation came to the Thracian tribes, as to the Illyrian, from two
sides; that of the Hellenes from the coast and from the Macedonian
frontier, the Latin from the Dalmatian and Pannonian frontier. Of the
former it will be more appropriate to treat when we attempt to describe
the position of the European Greeks under the imperial rule; here it
suffices generally to bring out the fact that not merely did that rule
protect the Greek element, where it found it, and the whole coast, even
that subject to the governor of Moesia, always remained Greek; but
that the province of Thrace, whose civilisation was begun in earnest
only by Trajan, and was throughout a work of the imperial period, was
not guided into a Roman path, but became Hellenised. Even the northern
slopes of the Haemus, although administratively belonging to Moesia,
were comprehended in this Hellenising; Nicopolis on the Jantra and
Marcianopolis, not far from Varna, both foundations of Trajan, were
organised after a Greek model.
[Sidenote: And in Moesia.]
Of the Latin civilisation of Moesia the same holds true as of that of
the adjoining Dalmatian and Pannonian interior; only, as was natural,
it emerges so much the later, weaker, and more impure, the farther
remote it is from its starting-point. It followed predominantly here
the encampments of the legions, and with these advanced eastward,
starting from the probably oldest camps of Moesia at Singidunum
(Belgrade) and Viminacium (Kostolatz).[123] It is true that, in keeping
with the character of its armed apostles, it kept at a very low stage
in upper Moesia, and left room enough for the play of the primitive
conditions. Viminacium obtained Italian urban rights from Hadrian.
Lower Moesia, between the Balkan and the Danube, in the earlier
imperial period, remained probably throughout in the condition which
the Romans found subsisting there; not till the legion-camps on the
lower Danube were founded at Novae, Durostorum, and Troesmis, which,
as will be set forth further on (p. 227), probably did not take place
till the beginning of the second century, did this part of the right
bank of the Danube become a seat of so much Italian civilisation as
was compatible with camp-arrangements. Thenceforth civil settlements
arose here too--particularly on the Danube itself, between the
great standing camps, the towns constituted after the Italian model,
Ratiaria, not far from Widin, and Oescus at the confluence of the Iskra
with the Danube--and gradually the region approached the level of the
Roman culture then subsisting, though of itself on its decline. In the
construction of highways in lower Moesia the rulers displayed manifold
activity after the time of Hadrian, from whom the oldest milestones
hitherto found there date.
[Sidenote: Hermunduri.]
If we turn from the survey of the Roman rule, as it took shape from
Augustus onward in the lands on the right bank of the Danube, to the
relations and the inhabitants of the left, what we should have to
remark as to the most westerly region has already in the main been
said in the description of upper Germany; and in particular it has
been noticed (p. 158) that the Germans next adjoining Raetia, the
Hermunduri, were of all the neighbours of the Romans the most peaceful,
and, so far as is known to us, never fell into conflict with them.
[Sidenote: Marcomani.]
[Sidenote: Vannius.]
We have already stated that the people of the Marcomani, or, as
Romans usually term them in earlier times, the Suebi, after it had in
the Augustan age found new settlements in the old land of the Boii,
the modern Bohemia, and had acquired through king Maroboduus a more
fixed political organisation, remained indeed an onlooker during
the Romano-German wars, but was preserved through the intervention
of the Rhenish Germans from the threatened Roman invasion. We have
also pointed out that, indirectly, the renewed abandonment of the
Roman offensive on the Rhine overthrew this too neutral state. The
position of paramount power, which the Marcomani under Maroboduus had
gained over the more remote peoples in the region of the Elbe, was
thereby lost; and the king himself died as an exile on Roman soil (p.
61). The Marcomani and their eastern neighbours of kindred stock,
the Quadi in Moravia, fell under Roman clientship, in so far as in
their case, nearly as in that of Armenia, the pretenders contending
for the mastery leaned in part for support on the Romans, and these
claimed, and according to circumstances also exercised, the right of
investiture. The prince of the Cotones, Catualda, who had in the first
instance overthrown Maroboduus, could not maintain himself long as his
successor, especially as Vibilius king of the neighbouring Hermunduri
took part against him; he too had to pass over into Roman territory,
and like Maroboduus to invoke the imperial favour. Tiberius then
induced a Quadian of rank Vannius to take his place; for the numerous
train of the two banished kings, which was not allowed to remain on
the right bank of the Danube, Tiberius procured settlements on the
left in the March valley,[124] and procured for Vannius recognition on
the part of the Hermunduri friendly with Rome. After a thirty years'
rule the latter was overthrown in the year 50 by his two nephews
Vangio and Sido, who revolted against him, and gained for themselves
the neighbouring peoples, the Hermunduri in Franconia, the Lugii in
Silesia. The Roman government, which Vannius solicited for support,
remained true to the policy of Tiberius; it granted to the overthrown
king the right of asylum, but did not interfere, especially as the
successors, who shared the territory between them, readily acknowledged
the Roman supremacy. The new prince of the Suebi, Sido, and his
co-ruler Italicus, perhaps the successor of Vangio, fought in the
battle, which decided between Vitellius and Vespasian, with the Roman
army of the Danube on the side of the Flavians. In the great crises
of the Roman rule on the Danube under Domitian and Marcus we shall
again meet their successors. The Suebi of the Danube did not belong to
the Roman empire; coins probably struck by them show doubtless Latin
inscriptions, but not the Roman standard, to say nothing of the image
of the emperor; taxes proper and levies for Rome did not here take
place. But, in the first century particularly, the Suebian state in
Bohemia and Moravia was included within the sphere of Roman power; and,
as was already observed, this was not without its influence on the
stationing of the Roman frontier-guard.
[Sidenote: Jazyges.]
In the plain between the Danube and Theiss eastward from the Roman
Pannonia, and between this and the Thracian Daci, there was inserted
a section of the people--probably belonging to the Medo-Persian
stock--the Sarmatae, who living nomadically as a nation of shepherds
and horsemen filled in great part the wide east-European plain; these
were the Jazyges, named the "emigrants" (μετανάσται) in distinction
from the chief stock which remained behind on the Black Sea. The
designation shows that they only advanced at a comparatively late
period into these regions; perhaps their immigration falls to be
included among the assaults, under which about the time of the battle
of Actium the Dacian kingdom of Burebista broke down (p. 11). They
meet us here at first under the emperor Claudius; the Jazyges supplied
the Suebian king Vannius with the cavalry for his wars. The Roman
government was on its guard against the alert and predatory bands of
horsemen, but did not otherwise sustain hostile relations to them. When
the legions of the Danube marched to Italy in the year 70 to place
Vespasian on the throne, they declined the contingent of cavalry
offered by the Jazyges, and in fitter fashion carried with them only a
number of the men of chief rank, in order that these should meanwhile
be pledges for quiet on the denuded frontier.
[Sidenote: Daci.]
More serious and continuous watch was needed farther down on the lower
Danube. There, beyond the mighty stream, which was now the boundary
of the empire, were settled in the plains of Wallachia and the modern
Transylvania the Daci; in the eastern flat country, in Moldavia,
Bessarabia, and onward, in the first instance, the Germanic Bastarnae,
and then Sarmatian tribes, such as the Roxolani, a people of horsemen
like the Jazyges, at first between the Dnieper and Don (iii. 295)
{iii. 281.}, then advancing along the sea-shore. In the first years
of Tiberius the vassal prince of Thrace strengthened his troops to
ward off the Bastarnae and Scythians; in the latter years of Tiberius
it was urged among other proofs of his government more and more
neglecting everything, that he suffered the inroads of the Dacians and
the Sarmatae to pass unpunished. How matters went on in the last years
of Nero on either side of the mouths of the Danube is approximately
shown by the accidentally preserved report of the governor of Moesia
at that time, Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus. The latter "brought
upwards of 100,000 men dwelling beyond the Danube, with their wives
and children, and their princes or kings over the river, so that they
became liable to pay tribute. He suppressed a movement of the Sarmatae
before it came to an outbreak, although he had given away a great part
of his troops for the carrying on of war in Armenia (to Corbulo). A
number of kings hitherto unknown or at feud with the Romans he brought
over to the Roman bank, and compelled them to prostrate themselves
before the Roman standards. To the kings of the Bastarnae and Roxolani
he sent back their sons, who had been made captive or recovered from
the enemy, to those of the Dacians their captive brothers,[125] and
took hostages from several of them. Thereby the state of peace for
the province was confirmed as well as further extended. He induced
also the king of the Scythians to desist from the siege of the town
Chersonesus (Sebastopol) beyond the Borysthenes. He was the first who,
by great consignments of corn from this province, made bread cheaper in
Rome." We perceive here clearly as well the agitated vortex of peoples
on the left bank of the Danube under the Julio-Claudian dynasty, as
also the strong arm of the imperial power, which even beyond the stream
sought to protect the Greek towns on the Dnieper and in the Crimea, and
was able also in some measure to do so, as will be further set forth
when we describe the state of Greek affairs.
[Sidenote: Inadequacy of Roman forces.]
The forces, however, which Rome had here at her disposal, were more
than inadequate. The insignificant garrison of Asia Minor, and the
fleet, likewise small on the Black Sea, were of account at most for the
Greek inhabitants of its northern and western coasts. A very difficult
task was assigned to the governor of Moesia, who with his two legions
had to protect the bank of the Danube from Belgrade to the mouth; and
the aid of the far from obedient Thracians was under the circumstances
an additional danger. Especially towards the mouth of the Danube there
was wanting a sufficient bulwark against the barbarians now pressing on
with increasing weight. The withdrawal on two occasions of the Danubian
legions to Italy in the troubles after Nero's death provoked still
more at the mouth of the Danube, than on the lower Rhine, incursions
of the neighbouring peoples, at first of the Roxolani, then of the
Dacians, then of the Sarmatae, that is, probably the Jazyges. There
were severe conflicts; in one of these engagements, apparently with the
Jazyges, the brave governor of Moesia, Gaius Fonteius Agrippa, fell.
Nevertheless, Vespasian did not proceed to increase the army of the
Danube;[126] the necessity of strengthening the Asiatic garrisons must
have appeared still more urgent, and the economy specially enjoined
at that time forbade any increase of the army as a whole. He contented
himself with pushing forward the great camps of the army of the Danube
to the frontier of the empire, as the pacification of the interior
allowed, and the relations subsisting at the frontier, as well as the
breaking up of the Thracian troops brought about by the annexation of
Thrace, imperatively required. Thus the Pannonian camps were brought
away from the Drave, opposite to the Suebian kingdom, to Carnuntum and
Vindobona (p. 206), and the Dalmatian from the Kerka and the Cettina
to the Moesian bank of the Danube,[127] so that the governor of Moesia
thenceforth disposed of double the number of legions.
[Sidenote: Dacian war of Domitian.]
[Sidenote: Decebalus.]
A shifting of the proportions of power to the disadvantage of Rome set
in under Domitian,[128] or rather the consequences of the insufficient
frontier-defence were then reaped. According to the little we know
of the matter, the change of affairs hinged, quite like the similar
one in Caesar's time, upon a single Dacian man; what king Burebista
had planned, king Decebalus seemed destined to execute. How much the
real moving-spring lay in his personality, is shown by the story
that the Dacian king Duras, in order to bring the right man into
the right place, retired from his office in favour of Decebalus.
That Decebalus first of all organised in order to strike, is shown
by the reports as to his introduction of Roman discipline into the
Dacian army, and his enlisting people of capacity among the Romans
themselves, and even by the condition proposed by him to the Romans
after the victory, that they should send him the necessary workmen to
instruct his people in the arts of peace as of war. On what a great
scale he set to work is shown by the connections which he formed,
westward and eastward, with the Suebi and the Jazyges, and even with
the Parthians. The assailants were the Dacians. The governor of the
province of Moesia, who first went to oppose them, Oppius Sabinus,
lost his life on the field of battle. A number of smaller camps were
conquered; the larger were threatened, the possession of the province
itself was at stake. Domitian in person resorted to the army, and
his representative--he himself was no general and remained in the
background--the commandant of the guard, Cornelius Fuscus, led the
army over the Danube; but he paid for the incautious proceeding by a
severe defeat, and he too, the second in supreme command, fell before
the enemy. His successor, Julianus, a capable officer, defeated the
Dacians in their own territory in a great battle near Tapae, and was
on the way to achieve lasting results. But, while the struggle with
the Dacians was in suspense, Domitian had threatened the Suebi and
Jazyges with war, because they had omitted to send to him a contingent
against the former; the messengers, who came to excuse this, he caused
to be executed.[129] Here too misfortune pursued the Roman arms. The
Marcomani achieved a victory over the emperor himself; a whole legion
was surrounded by the Jazyges and cut down. Shaken by this defeat,
Domitian, in spite of the advantages gained by Julianus over the
Dacians, hastily concluded with these a peace, which did not indeed
prevent him from conferring the crown upon the representative of
Decebalus in Rome, Diegis, just as if the latter were a vassal of the
Romans, or from marching as victor to the Capitol, but which in reality
was equivalent to a capitulation. What Decebalus, on the advance of the
Roman army into Dacia, had scoffingly offered--to dismiss to his home
uninjured every man for whom a yearly payment of two asses was promised
to him--became almost true: in the peace the incursions into Moesia
were bought off with a fixed sum to be paid yearly.
[Sidenote: Dacian war of Trajan.]
Here a change had to be effected. Domitian, who was doubtless a good
administrator of the empire, but obtuse to the demands of military
honour, was followed after the short reign of Nerva by the emperor
Trajan, who, first and above all a soldier, not merely tore in pieces
that agreement, but also took measures that similar things should not
recur. The war against the Suebi and Sarmatae, which was still being
continued at Domitian's death (96), was happily ended, as it would
seem, under Nerva in the year 97. The new emperor went, even before
he held his entrance into the capital of the empire, from the Rhine
to the Danube, where he stayed in the winter 98-99, but not to attack
the Dacians at once, but to prepare for the war: to this time belongs
the construction--joining itself on to the roads formed in upper
Germany--of the road completed on the right bank of the Danube in the
region of Orsova in the year 100 (p. 153). For the war against the
Dacians, in which, as in all his campaigns, he commanded in person, he
did not set out till the spring of 101. He crossed the Danube below
Viminacium, and advanced against the not far distant capital of the
king, Sarmizegetusa. Decebalus with his allies--the Buri and other
tribes dwelling to the northward took part in this struggle--offered
resolute resistance, and it was only by vehement and bloody conflicts
that the Romans cleared their way; the number of the wounded was so
great that the emperor put his own wardrobe at the disposal of the
physicians. But victory did not waver; one stronghold after another
fell; the sisters of the king, the captives from the former war, the
standards taken from the armies of Domitian, fell into the hands of the
Romans; for the king, intercepted by Trajan himself and by the brave
Lusius Quietus, nothing was left but complete surrender (102). Trajan
demanded nothing less than the renunciation of the sovereign power and
the entrance of the Dacian kingdom into the clientship of Rome. The
deserters, the arms, the engines of war, the workmen once supplied for
these by Rome, had to be delivered up, and the king personally to kneel
before the victor; he divested himself of the right to make war and
peace, and promised military service; the fortresses were either razed
or delivered to the Romans, and in these, above all in the capital,
there remained a Roman garrison. The strong bridge of stone, which
Trajan caused to be thrown over the Danube at Drobetae (opposite Turnu
Severinului), secured the communication even in the bad season of the
year, and gave to the Dacian garrisons a reserve-support in the near
legions of upper-Moesia.
[Sidenote: Second Dacian war.]
But the Dacian nation, and above all the king himself, did not know
the art of accommodating themselves to dependence, as the kings of
Cappadocia and Mauretania had understood it; or rather they had
merely taken upon them the yoke in the hope of ridding themselves
of it again on the first opportunity. The signs of this were soon
apparent. A portion of the arms to be delivered up was kept back; the
fortresses were not given over as had been stipulated; an asylum was
still granted, moreover, to Roman deserters; portions of territory
were wrested from the Jazyges at enmity with the Dacians, or perhaps
the occurrence of violations of the frontier on their part was not
taken patiently; a lively and suspicious intercourse was maintained
with the more remote natives still free. Trajan could not but be
convinced that his work was but half done; and, rapid in resolution as
he was, he, without entering upon further negotiations, declared war
once more against the king three years after the conclusion of peace
(105). Gladly would the latter have avoided it; but the demand that
he should give himself a captive spoke too clearly. Nothing was left
but a struggle of despair, and all were not ready for this; a great
part of the Dacians submitted without resistance. The appeal to the
neighbouring peoples to enter jointly into measures for warding off the
danger that threatened even their freedom and their national existence
sounded without effect; Decebalus and the Dacians that remained
faithful to him stood alone in this war. The attempts to make away with
the imperial general by means of deserters, or to purchase tolerable
terms by the release of a high officer taken prisoner, likewise broke
down. The emperor marched once more as victor into the enemy's capital,
and Decebalus, who up to the last moment had struggled with fate, put
himself to death when all was lost (107). This time Trajan made an end;
the war concerned no longer the freedom of the people, but its very
existence. The native population were driven out from the best part
of the land, and these districts were reoccupied with a non-national
population brought in from the mountains of Dalmatia, for the mines,
and otherwise preponderantly, as it would appear, from Asia Minor. In
several regions, no doubt, the old population yet remained, and even
the language of the country maintained its ground.[130] These Dacians,
as well as the sections dwelling beyond the bounds, still gave trouble
to the Romans--subsequently, for example, under Commodus and Maximinus;
but they stood isolated, and dwindled away. The danger with which the
vigorous Thracian race had several times threatened the Roman rule
could not be allowed to recur, and this end Trajan attained. The Rome
of Trajan was no longer that of the age of Hannibal; but it was still
dangerous to have conquered the Romans.
[Sidenote: Trajan's column.]
The stately column which six years afterwards was erected to the
emperor by the imperial senate in the new Forum Trajanum of the
capital, and which still adorns it at the present day, is an evidence,
to which we possess nothing parallel, of the extent to which the
traditional history of the Roman imperial period has suffered havoc.
Throughout its height of exactly one hundred Roman feet it is covered
with separate representations to the number of one hundred and
twenty-four--a chiselled picture-book of the Dacian wars, to which
almost everywhere we lack the text. We see the watch-towers of the
Romans with their pointed roofs, their palisaded court, their upper
gallery, their fire-signals; the town on the bank of the Danube-stream,
whose river-god looks on at the Roman warriors, as they march under
their standards along the bridge of boats; the emperor himself in his
council of war, and then sacrificing at the altar before the walls
of the camp. It is narrated that the Buri allied with the Dacians
dissuaded Trajan from the war in a Latin sentence written on a huge
mushroom; we fancy that we recognise this mushroom placed as a load
on a sumpter-animal, jumping from which a barbarian, lying on the
ground with his club, points out the mushroom with his finger to the
advancing emperor. We see the pitching of the camp, the felling of
trees, the fetching of water, the laying of the bridge. The first
captive Dacians, easily recognisable by their long-sleeved frocks
and their wide trousers, with their hands bound behind their back,
and with their long bushy hair grasped by the soldiers, are brought
before the emperor. We see the combats, the men hurling spears, the
slingers, the sickle-bearers, the archers on foot, the heavy-mailed
horsemen also bearing the bow, the dragon-banners of the Dacians, the
officers of the enemy adorned with the round cap as the token of their
rank, the pine-wood, into which the Dacians carry their wounded, the
cut-off heads of the barbarians deposited before the emperor. We see
the Dacian village on piles in the middle of the lake, against the
round huts of which, with their pointed roof, the burning torches are
flying. Women and children sue the emperor for mercy. The wounded are
cared for and bound up; badges of honour are distributed to officers
and soldiers. Then the conflict proceeds; the hostile entrenchments,
partly of wood, partly stone walls, are assailed; the besieging-train
advances, the ladders are brought up, the storming-column makes its
assault under cover of the _testudo_. Lastly, the king with his train
lies at the feet of Trajan; the dragon-banners are in the hands of the
Romans; the troops in exultation salute the emperor; Victoria stands
before the piled-up arms of the enemy and inscribes the slab recording
the victory. Then follow the pictures of the second war, of similar
character on the whole to those of the first series. Worthy of notice
is one great representation, which, after the king's stronghold has
been burnt, appears to show the princes of the Dacians sitting round
a kettle and, one after the other, emptying the poison-cup; another,
where the head of the brave Dacian king is brought on a tray to the
emperor; and lastly, the closing picture, the long series of the
conquered with their women, children, and flocks marching away from
their home. The emperor himself wrote the history of this war--as
Frederick the Great wrote that of the Seven Years' War--and many
others after him; all this is lost to us, and as nobody would venture
to invent the history of the Seven Years' War from Menzel's pictures,
there is left to us only, along with a glimpse into half intelligible
details, the painful feeling of a stirring and great historical
catastrophe faded for ever and lost even to remembrance.
[Sidenote: Military position on the Danube after Trajan.]
The defence of the frontier in the region of the Danube was not shifted
to such a degree, as might well be expected, in consequence of the
conversion of Dacia into a Roman province; a change, in the strict
sense, of the line of defence did not take place, but the new province
was treated on the whole as an eccentric position, which was only
connected directly with the Roman territory towards the south along the
Danube itself, on the other three sides projected into the barbarian
land. The plain of the Theiss, stretching between Pannonia and Dacia
continued in the hands of the Jazyges; there have been found remains of
old walls, which led from the Danube over the Theiss away to the Dacian
mountains, and bounded the region of the Jazyges to the north, but of
the time and the authors of these entrenchments nothing certain is
known. Bessarabia also is intersected by a double barrier-line which,
running from the Pruth to the Dniester, ends at Tyra, and--according
to the inadequate reports hitherto before us on the subject--appears
to proceed from the Romans.[131] If this was the case, then Moldavia
and the south half of Bessarabia as well as the whole of Wallachia
were incorporated in the Roman empire. But, though this may have been
done nominally, the Roman rule hardly extended effectively to these
lands; at least there is, up to the present time, an utter absence
of sure proofs of Roman settlement either in eastern Wallachia or in
Moldavia and Bessarabia. At any rate, the Danube here remained, much
more than the Rhine in Germany, the limit of Roman civilisation and the
proper basis of frontier-defence. The positions on it were considerably
reinforced. It was a fortunate circumstance for Rome that, while the
surge of peoples rose on the Danube, it sank on the Rhine, and the
troops that could be there dispensed with were disposable elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Commands increased to five.]
Although under Vespasian probably not more than six legions were
stationed on the Danube, their number was subsequently raised by
Domitian and Trajan to ten; the two chief commands of Moesia and
Pannonia hitherto subsisting were withal divided, the first under
Domitian, the second under Trajan, and, as the Dacian was super-added,
the whole number of the commanderships on the lower Danube was fixed
at five. At the outset, indeed, they seem to have cut off the corner
which this stream forms below Durostorum (Silistria)--the modern
Dobrudscha--and from the place now called Rassowa, where the river
approaches within thirty miles of the sea, in order then to bend almost
at a right angle to the north, to have substituted for the river-line a
fortified road after the manner of the British (p. 187), which reached
the coast at Tomis.[132] This corner, however, was, at least from the
time of Hadrian, embraced within the Roman frontier-fortification; for
from that time we find lower Moesia, which before Trajan had probably
possessed no larger standing garrisons at all, furnished with the three
legionary camps of Novae (near Svischtova), Durostorum (Silistria),
and Troesmis (Iglitza, near Galatz), of which the last lies in front
of that very angle of the Danube. Against the Jazyges the position was
strengthened by adding to the upper Moesian camps at Singidunum and
Viminacium the lower Pannonian at the confluence of the Theiss with the
Danube near Acumincum. Dacia itself was then but weakly garrisoned.
The capital, now a colony of Trajan, Sarmizegetusa, lay not far from
the chief crossings over the Danube in upper Moesia; here and on the
middle Marisus, as well as beyond it in the districts of the gold
mines, the Romans chiefly settled; the one legion serving as garrison
since Trajan's time in Dacia obtained its headquarters, at least soon
afterwards, in this region at Apulum (Karlsburg). Farther to the north
Potaissa (Thorda) and Napoca (Klausenburg) were probably also at once
taken possession of by the Romans, but it was only gradually that
the great Pannono-Dacian military centres pushed farther towards the
north. The transference of the lower Pannonian legion from Acumincum
to Aquincum, the modern Buda, and the occupation of this commanding
military position, fall not later than Hadrian, and probably under
him; probably at the same time one of the upper Pannonian legions came
to Brigetio (opposite to Comorn). Under Commodus all settlement was
prohibited along the northern frontier of Dacia for a breadth of nearly
five miles, which must stand connected with the frontier regulations to
be subsequently mentioned after the Marcomanian war. At that time also
the fortified lines may have originated, which barred this frontier
similarly to the upper Germanic. Under Severus one of the legions
previously in lower Moesia was brought to Potaissa (Thorda) on the
Dacian north frontier.
[Sidenote: Dacia an advanced position.]