are concerned, and indeed, in most other respects, very much in our
own position at the present day. Just as we thoughtlessly and unjustly
estimate the exploits of our soldiers in the Soudan, on the North-West
frontier of India, on the West Coast of Africa, and even in South
Africa, rather cheaply, and disparage their achievements in comparison
with those of Marlborough and Wellington, so the contemporaries of
Augustus looked back with regret to the heroes of the Punic Wars and
the conquerors of Greece; they did not realize that the work which
was to be done in their own time was far more difficult than the work
which had been done. We too forget that to win the Battle of Waterloo
was a trifle compared with the operations which led up to the victory
of Omdurman, and the double march into the Transvaal. The exploits of
Wellington in the Peninsula were splendid, impeded as they were by
opposition from England; but in the conquest of South Africa England
has grappled with far more serious difficulties, and her generals have
shown themselves at least as resourceful as Wellington.
The generals of the Augustan age are hardly known to us. Few class
Agrippa with the leading generals of the world, but the man who for the
first time organized the navy of the Roman Empire, who maintained the
organization of the army on such a footing that the enormous frontier
was never without its defenders, who was himself never beaten in the
field, and who trained a succession of capable officers to follow in
his footsteps, was no mean general. Similarly Tiberius and his brother,
along with many capable subordinates, waged successful campaigns under
conditions of peculiar difficulty for many years; but we never think
of them as great soldiers, because their exploits did not stir the
imagination of their contemporaries.
Vast though the Roman Empire was, its vulnerable frontiers were of
relatively small extent in the reign of Augustus; there was a weak
place at the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates; the Upper Nile had
its Soudanese difficulty then as now, but the whole of the North Coast
of Africa was protected by the desert, and the Mauretanian tribes were
not numerous enough really to imperil the strip of civilization along
the Mediterranean. Spain was all Roman and nearly all civilized, so was
Gaul; but between the mouths of the Rhine and the Bosphorus there was
a vast unsettled region, reaching down in one place to a point within
ten days’ journey of Rome itself, and along an unbroken line of many
hundred miles, threatening the cities of Macedonia and Greece. The
problem before Augustus and his generals was to form a frontier which
should permanently secure Gaul, Italy, and the Balkan Peninsula from
the adventurous races of central and East Central Europe.
The weakest point in the chain of defence was the Northern corner of
the Adriatic, and the increasing prosperity of the great plains of
the Po after they had become a Roman province naturally attracted the
attention of the semi-civilized tribes who lived in the hills along
the Dalmatian coast. Not only was there danger from the East, but the
valley of the Adige formed a gateway through which Central Europe
could pour its restless multitudes upon the Cis-Alpine Province. The
geographical configuration of the regions south of the plains of the
Eastern Danube has always impeded their progress, and to this very day
a patch of backward nationalities remains there in close proximity to
the most elaborately civilized states of Europe.
The other weak spot was the course of the Rhine, and especially the
country below the Drakensberg; that noble river for many miles from the
Lake of Constance formed a natural defence against the Germanic hordes,
but on reaching the flat land below Cologne it spread into marshes
and split into smaller channels, in which flotillas of boats could be
prepared without attracting notice, as was necessarily the case where
the river ran in a single stream. In fact it was practically found that
in places the Rhine was no barrier, and that the tribes on its Eastern
bank must be rolled back from the river, if Gaul was to enjoy her new
prosperity in peace.
It was in the defence of these two weak spots that Tiberius was to
fight his chief campaigns. In both regions security demanded that the
operations should be conducted far beyond the frontier, in country
difficult at the present day, and tenfold more difficult then, when
extensive forests and marshes were added to the impediments offered by
ravines and mountains.
It is not easy to estimate the degree of civilization reached by the
Pannonians and Dalmatians or the Germanic tribes, when they made war
upon the Roman legions. To the ancients all men living under tribal
or national institutions were barbarians; they restricted the honour
of civilization to those whose political constitution was based upon
the city, and though the Græco-Roman city organization practically
covered the two peninsulas, which we call Greece and Italy, it did not
elsewhere extend far inland; the outer fringe of cities was in close
contact with populations living under a clan system, whose chiefs or
kings adopted many of the luxuries and some of the institutions of
their neighbours; behind these again were less advanced nations and
less civilized rulers, gradually merging into real barbarism. The
Gallic chieftains had already been in frequent communication with Rome
for a century before Cæsar conquered Gaul, and the influence of the
Roman traders upon the general standard of civilization was perceptible
in his time even among the German tribes nearest to the Rhine. Arminius
had had a Roman education, Maroboduus was brought up by Augustus,
adopted the Roman military system and welcomed refugees who could train
his troops; Latin was already spoken by the Dalmatian tribes when
they were eventually conquered by Tiberius. Though the greater part
of Central Europe was under forest the valleys were cultivated, as
they were in Britain at the time of Cæsar’s invasions, but the forest
was always near enough to receive fugitives, and to give cover to an
attacking party. There were no large aggregations of human beings in
towns, but there were areas sufficiently thickly populated, and their
population was sufficiently well organized to bring formidable armies
into the field, whose operations were skilfully conducted. The men
were no more savages than the Boers are savages; their civilization
was a different civilization from the Græco-Roman, but it was a
civilization. The occurrences of the Highland Line were anticipated in
the foothills of the Alps; sometimes there was a mere cattle-lifting
raid, when a predecessor of Rob Roy swooped down upon the farms round
Mantua or Cremona, sometimes a combination of clans under a capable
chieftain waged a formidable war, whose object was less plunder than
the preservation of their independence; sometimes the pressure of real
savagery from behind urged the more civilized races forward till the
ultimate wave fell upon the Roman frontier.
Far in the East round the mouths of the Danube the predecessors of the
Cossacks on their little horses kept the Roman outposts in a state of
terror. Ovid tells us how they swooped down upon the labourers in the
fields round the camp at Tomi, how their arrows fell into its very
centre, how they galloped round its walls, picked up some unfortunate
straggler, and were off with him before pursuit could be organized.
Reading such a description as this we realize the true significance
of the two Roman walls in England, and the wall from the Main to the
Danube in Germany. They were not defences against systematic war; they
were too long to be defended against an organized invasion, but they
effectually prevented raiding. Cattle cannot be lifted over a wall
twelve feet high. The difference between our frontier wars and the
Roman frontier wars lies in the proximity of the Roman frontiers to the
heart of the Empire; but in spite of the perpetual imminence of the
danger, the Romans did not pay a sufficient tribute of gratitude to the
generals who secured their safety, and were inclined to underestimate
their services.
Even such a clear-sighted historian as Merivale, in speaking of the
military operations of Tiberius and Drusus in Germany, adopts the
attitude of Tacitus, and disparages the cautious policy of Augustus,
which discouraged schemes of boundless conquest in Central Europe.
Tacitus wrote, when Trajan was engaged in rectifying the frontier
of the Lower Danube, new dangers threatened the Empire and new
measures seemed advisable. The men of his day might be pardoned for
thinking that they were called upon to do what Augustus had unwisely
left undone. Possibly they were right, but they omitted from their
calculations a fact which was of the first importance, and of itself
imposed prudence. The fighting strength of the Empire was not adequate
for a policy of indefinite expansion at the end of the reign of
Augustus, nor even in its middle period. It was difficult to steer
between the two extremes. Augustus had seen the evils of a rampant
military policy in the careers of his uncle and Antonius; he had known
what it was to be the puppet of his own soldiers; he had fought in the
Civil Wars, and he rightly inferred that there could be no settled
government so long as the sword outbalanced the gown. Quite apart
from any personal ambition or mean motive, he shrank from creating
fresh military heroes, who might be tempted to overthrow the carefully
balanced fabric of the State, and renew the Marian and Sullan episodes,
or the hateful reign of the Triumvirate in which he had himself taken
an unwilling part. On the other hand, a certain strength was necessary
to police the Empire and guard its frontiers. In the encouragement
which he gave to civilians in the public service, in the revival of
commerce, and the abundance of employment secured by the internal peace
of the Empire, Augustus cut off his supply of recruits; the army no
longer competed favourably with other employments, and year by year
the number of homeless and ruined men, to whom military service had
opened an opportunity, was reduced. Men were too precious to be lightly
ventured on interminable expeditions in the Hercynian forest, where the
elk, and possibly even the mammoth, still tested the ingenuity of the
hunter.
At the age of seventeen Tiberius accompanied Augustus and Agrippa
to Spain, where a campaign was conducted in the mountainous regions
occupied by the Cantabrians. Augustus soon fell ill and returned home,
but Tiberius remained to take his first lessons in war under the able
and ingenious Agrippa. The Romans wisely flung their young men into
active life at a very early age, and those who had it in them to
learn, had every opportunity of learning. Four years later Tiberius,
barely of age to manage his own affairs according to our ideas, was
put in command of the expedition which penetrated Armenia, and awed
the Parthians into a surrender of the captured standards. We are not
told that there was any serious fighting on this occasion; the triumph
was one of diplomacy rather than of arms, and the expedition itself
took the form of an armed demonstration strong enough to determine
the course of the negotiations rather than of a campaign. Doubtless
Tiberius was attended by capable advisers in addition to those splendid
centurions, the link between the commissioned and non-commissioned
officers, who formed the backbone of the Roman armies; but in any
case the experience was a valuable one. It was necessary that the
army should be conducted through a difficult and mountainous country,
far from its base; any negligence, any want of foresight, might have
brought on a disaster which, even if only temporary, would have spoiled
the effect contemplated, and weakened the Roman Plenipotentiaries. The
expedition was a better training than even a long course of autumn
manœuvres, and Tiberius returned from it with a full knowledge of
military problems.
The extraordinary indifference of the historians Paterculus and
Suetonius to chronology, and their absolutely casual use of such
connectives as “hereupon,” “soon afterwards,” and the like, makes it
difficult to be certain of the real sequence of events. It is, however,
certain that Tiberius was Governor of Transalpine Gaul for a year at
some period between B.C. 20 and B.C. 16, that he was harassed during
the term of his Governorship by sporadic invasions of German tribes,
and was able to measure their importance as affecting the peace of his
Province, and form plans for permanently checking them. He came to the
conclusion that the whole middle and eastern Alpine region was a centre
of disturbance, and that it could not be dealt with alone, seeing that
the tribes who lived on the Dalmatian coast and at the sources of the
Save were always ready to create a diversion when the Roman armies were
occupied in the valleys to the south or north-west of the Alps. Cæsar
had more than once been called back from the conquest of Gaul to deal
with the Pirustæ in the same quarter.
In B.C. 16 the ill-omened Marcus Lollius sustained a serious defeat at
the hands of the German tribes, while Gaul itself had been rendered
unquiet by the exactions of Licinus, himself a Gaul employed by
Augustus as Governor in the Southern Province. Augustus himself went
to Gaul to set straight the civilian administration, Agrippa was sent
to the Illyrian regions, Drusus to the passes leading from Lombardy to
the Upper Rhine, while Tiberius took charge of an expedition directed
upon the same region from Basle by the Lake of Constance. This was the
first of the great combined movements originated by Tiberius; their
conception, but even more their success, mark him out as a general of
genius. Given a mobile enemy able to live on the country, and provided
with an interminable area at his rear into which he can retreat, the
only hope of dealing with him successfully is to cut off his retreat.
This was the strategy of Tiberius.
The army of Agrippa in Illyria protected the rear of Drusus, who was
able to drive the Alpine tribes back through the passes to the Northern
face of the Alps, where they found the army of Tiberius ready for
them. The victory was so complete that the very names of these tribes
disappear from history; squeezed between two Roman armies they were
doubtless exterminated. Horace wrote an official ode on the occasion,
comparing Drusus to a young eagle or lion; and in a complimentary ode
to Augustus on another occasion, compared the charge of Tiberius to the
impetuous floods of the Aufidus, his native river. The northern slopes
of the Western Alps were now secured to Rome; there was no longer any
danger of Gallic intrigues stimulated by the restless Helvetii, but the
work was by no means done. Augustus seems to have remained for some
time in Gaul studying its social conditions, Agrippa remained in the
Illyrian district, Drusus was sent to the lower Rhine, and Tiberius,
as far as we can gather, remained at Rome.
Profiting by the experience gained in the recent war, Drusus determined
to repeat the strategy of Tiberius, and again to hem in an elusive
enemy between two Roman armies; he himself marched up the Lippe, making
a point on the Weser, somewhere near Paderborn, his objective, and at
the same time he sent a flotilla down the Rhine, with instructions
to ascend the mouth of the Weser, and thus cut off the flight of the
Germans. The first attempt failed, the fleet being dispersed by storms;
it was reserved for Tiberius himself to succeed at a later date in this
combined movement. In the following year Drusus advanced to the Weser,
and on his return established a permanent outpost at Aliso, fifty
miles up the Lippe; this was the period of the death of Agrippa, whose
command in Pannonia was taken over by Tiberius. We know but little of
the operations of Tiberius in Pannonia at this time, except that they
were successful, and that the ring of Roman provinces was now completed
along the East coast of the Adriatic, uniting Greece and Macedonia with
Italy.
In B.C. 10 Augustus returned to Gaul; Drusus consecrated a temple in
his honour at Lyons, and the worship of the Roman Empire personified
in Augustus was officially substituted for the Druidical religion, in
whose priesthood Augustus saw the irreconcilable enemy of Rome. After
this ceremony Drusus again crossed the Rhine and penetrated as far as
the Elbe; on his return he met with the accident which caused his
death, and elicited that touching illustration of affection on the part
of Tiberius, to which reference has already been made.
Tiberius took up his brother’s work on the Rhine and remained there
for two years; he has disappointed the historians by doing nothing
sensational, but when at the end of the two years Augustus called him
back to Rome to take the place of Imperial Colleague, he left the
Roman frontier extended, and the German terror pushed back from the
immediate vicinity of the river. He had created a Roman party among
the German chiefs, as Cæsar had created a Roman party among the Gallic
chiefs; partly as hostages, partly as friends, the young German nobles
were tempted to Rome to learn her civilization and form estimates of
her weakness; the Eastern bank of the river was sufficiently Romanized
to tempt Varus to treat it fifteen years later as a Roman province.
Tiberius did more than this: he began that policy which was eventually
to substitute for the magnificent conception of the all-embracing Roman
Empire the map of Europe; he transferred 40,000 Germans to the left
bank of the Rhine; they accepted the lands assigned to them, coupled
with the obligation to service in the armies of their conquerors. It
was a perilous policy, but no one could have foreseen its results in
the distant future, and even if its tendencies had been suspected at
the time, the pressing needs of the Empire would have silenced the
voice of a too clear-sighted critic. The Empire was short of soldiers;
men evaded military service by all possible means. Even the dreaded
slavery of the ergastula seemed to them less terrible than the army;
pay could not be found to make the soldier’s career sufficiently
attractive, now that the chances of loot and liberal donatives were
of the smallest. The finances of the Empire were straitened; Augustus
had had difficulty in adding a death duty of five per cent. to his
resources. The suggestion of Tiberius must have seemed a stroke of
genius: to protect the frontiers by civilizing the enemies of the
Empire, to find a cheap supply of soldiers by imposing military service
on the hardy Germans, gradually to relieve the manufacturer and the
merchant of the burden of finding men and taxes; no words could praise
too highly the man who had suggested a means by which these desirable
objects could be secured. We ourselves are treading in the same path;
we congratulate ourselves on the wisdom which made English soldiers of
Highland clansmen and Irish rapparees, which has arrayed against Russia
the tribes of the North-West frontier, which fights the barbarians of
Central Africa with the trained barbarians of its coasts; but we too
shall have to pay the price which the Roman paid, if we neglect the
military training of the centre of the Empire, and allow its population
to expand unexercised in arms, incapable of fighting. If ever the day
comes when the Sikhs and Goorkhas or even our own children beyond the
seas learn by experience that preponderant force is in their own hands,
and that the breed of fighting men is not ready for action in Great
Britain, the Empire of England will be broken up, as the Empire of
Rome was broken up; not by any sudden cataclysm, but by the gradual
intrusion of the less civilized and less trained components of the
Empire upon the central administration.
The end of the government of Tiberius upon the Rhine was also the
beginning of his retirement; his resumption of public work was almost
immediately followed by a fresh outbreak in the Pannonian region, and
then came a terrible disaster to the Roman arms in the district of the
Rhine. Of the campaigns which followed we fortunately have a fairly
clear account given us by an eyewitness, Paterculus.
Unfortunately the only work from the pen of Paterculus that has come
down to our times, perhaps the only work that he completed, is a short
epitome of Roman history from the beginning to A.D. 30, which seems
to have been written as an introduction to a work of considerable
detail dealing with the campaigns in which the author and the relatives
of his friend Marcus Vinicius, to whom the work is dedicated, took
part. Paterculus belonged to the class of professional soldiers and
administrators whom the Empire called into being, or to whom at least
it gave a position which they had not hitherto enjoyed. In his eyes
the Empire was good, and its rulers were good; and while he is profuse
in his admiration of the heroes of the old Republic, and can pay as
high a tribute to Cicero as to any supporter of the Empire, he is no
less commendatory of the men who were brought to the front by the new
order of things. He does not single out Tiberius as alone worthy of
praise; such men as Marcus Lepidus, the son of the triumvir, and others
who were in a position to excite the jealousy of a suspicious tyrant,
enjoy a full share of his somewhat exuberant laudation. We may admit
that Paterculus was uncritical without accusing him of deliberate
dishonesty; he was a successful man; he was in the swim; he had no
reason for nicely adjusting praise and censure to meet the merits of
the men with whom he worked; he was not a frequenter of the Legitimist
drawing rooms, but an active capable official, bluff, hearty, with an
unfortunate propensity to consider himself a stylist. His grandfather
was, as we have seen, an intimate friend and fellow soldier of the
father of Tiberius; his father was also a soldier; he himself followed
the family profession; he served under Caius Cæsar in Armenia, under
Agrippa in Pannonia, under Tiberius both in Germany and Pannonia; he
was honoured with civil magistracies at Rome, and eventually became a
Senator; his brother was similarly successful. His value to us lies in
the fact that he was an eyewitness of the events which he describes,
and we may be sure that the few details which he thought worthy of
mention in his rapid summary are actual facts. M. Vinicius was Consul
in A.D. 30, and the honour enjoyed by his friend prompted Paterculus to
write and dedicate this little work. In the following year the events
took place which brought about the fall of Sejanus, whom Paterculus
praises highly; possibly he was one of those upon whom the wrath of the
Senate fell; in any case we hear nothing more of him, and his proposed
work was never written, or never published; he died, or at any rate
ceased to speak, before the reign of terror which accompanied the fall
of Sejanus had cast its shadow upon Tiberius, before the reigns of
Caligula and Nero had made it possible to believe every evil of a Roman
Emperor, before the novelty of the Empire had worn off; there was no
reason for adopting any but an optimistic tone.
Tiberius left Rome for Germany in A.D. 4; war had been going on there
for three years, the Roman general being then a Marcus Vinicius,
grandfather of the Consul to whom Paterculus dedicated his book.
Paterculus accompanied Tiberius, and was generally with him during the
nine years of his campaigns; he seems to have been a member of the
headquarters staff, succeeding his father as commander of the cavalry.
He says: “For nine years in succession, either as cavalry commander
or staff officer, I was a spectator of his most heavenly operations,
and assisted him in the measure permitted by my own mediocrity.”
The epithet strikes us as exuberant, but it is frequently used by
Paterculus, and not reserved for Tiberius; he employs it in speaking of
the eloquence of Cicero. The historian tells us of the incidents of the
journey through the most populous regions of Italy and the provinces of
Gaul; he describes the joy with which the inhabitants welcomed their
former governor, while the soldiers pressed to seize his hand, and
shouted, “Do we really see you, General? Have we got you safe again?
I served with you in Armenia, I in Rhætia, I was rewarded by you in
Vindelicia, I in Pannonia, I in Germany.”