The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

We have already traced the process by which old Greece and the neighbouring lands of Macedonia and Epeiros gradually sank, first practically, and then formally, into parts of the Roman dominion. It would be hard to say at what particular moment many of the Greek cities and islands sank from the relation of obedient allies into that of acknowledged subjects. ♦Their late formal annexation.♦ We have seen that some of them, as Rhodes and Byzantion, were not formally annexed till the reign of Vespasian. The Greek cities on the Euxine do not seem to have been formally annexed at all till a late period of the Eastern Empire. Other outlying Greek lands and cities became so mixed up with the history of some of the Asiatic kingdoms that they will come in for a mention along with them. ♦Conquest of Crete, B.C. 67,♦ Crete kept its independence to become a nest of pirates, and to be specially conquered. It then formed one province with the then recent conquest of Kyrênê, the one great Greek settlement in Africa, which had become an appanage of the Macedonian kings of Egypt. The same had been the fate of Cyprus, an island which had always been partly Greek, and which had been further Hellenized under its Macedonian kings. ♦of Cyprus, B.C. 58.♦ Cyprus too became a province. Thus, before Rome lost her own freedom, she had become the formal or practical mistress of all the earlier abodes of freedom. Men could not yet foresee that a time would come when Greek and Roman should be words having the same meaning, and when the place and name of Rome herself should be transferred to one of the Greek cities which Vespasian formally reduced from alliance to bondage.

♦The Asiatic Provinces.♦

In Roman history one war and one conquest always led to another, and, as the affairs of Illyria had led to Roman interference in Greece, so the affairs of Greece led to Roman interference in Asia. ♦B.C. 191-188.♦ The first war which Rome waged with Antiochos of Syria led to no immediate increase of the Roman territory, but all the Seleukid possessions on this side Tauros were divided among the allies of Rome. ♦Province of Asia. B.C. 133-129.♦ This, as usual, was the first step towards the conquest of Asia, and it is quite according to the usual course of things that the first Roman province beyond the Ægæan, the province of Asia, was formed of the dominions of Rome’s first and most useful allies, the kings of Pergamos. The mission of Alexander and his successors, as the representatives of Western civilization against the East, now passed into the hands of Rome. Step by step, the other lands west of Tauros came under the formal or practical dominion of Rome. ♦Bithynia. B.C. 74.♦ Bithynia was the first to be annexed, and this acquisition was one of the causes which led to the second war between Rome and the famous Mithridates of Pontos. ♦Overthrow of Mithridates. B.C. 64.♦ His final overthrow brought a number of other lands under Roman dominion or influence. The Greek cities of Sinôpê and Hêrakleia obtained a nominal freedom, and vassal kings went on reigning in part of Pontos itself, and in the distant Greek kingdom of Bosporos. Rome was now mistress of Asia Minor. ♦Lykia.♦ The land was divided among her provinces and her vassal kings, save that the wise federal commonwealth of Lykia still kept the highest amount of independence which was consistent with the practical supremacy of Rome.

The Mithridatic war, which made Rome mistress of Asia in the narrower sense, at once involved her in the affairs of the further East. Tigranes of Armenia had been the chief ally of Mithridates; but, though his power was utterly humbled, no Armenian province was added to the Roman dominion for a long time to come. ♦Province of Syria. B.C. 64.♦ But the remnant of the Seleukid monarchy became the Roman province of Syria. As usual, several cities and principalities were allowed to remain in various relations of alliance and dependence on the ruling commonwealth. ♦Palestine.♦ Among these we find Judæa and the rest of Palestine, sometimes under a Roman procurator, sometimes united under a single vassal king, sometimes parted out among various kings and tetrarchs, as suited the momentary caprice or policy of Rome. ♦Comparison with British India.♦ In all these various relations between the native states and the ruling city we have a lively foreshadowing of the relations between England and the subject and dependent princes of India. ♦Rome the champion of the West.♦ The conquests of Rome in these regions made her more distinctly than ever the sole representative of the West against the East, and these conquests presently brought her into collision with the one power in the known world which could at all meet her on equal terms. She had stepped into the place of Alexander and Seleukos so far as that all those parts of Alexander’s Asiatic conquests which had received even a varnish of Hellenic culture had become parts of her dominion. ♦Her rivalry with Parthia.♦ The further East beyond the Euphrates was again under the command of a great barbarian power, that of Parthia, which had stepped into the place of Persia, as Rome had stepped into the place of Greece and Macedonia. Rome had now again a rival, in a sense from which she had not had a rival since the overthrow of Carthage and Macedonia.

One only of the Macedonian kingdoms now remained to be gathered in. ♦Conquest of Egypt. B.C. 31.♦ The annexation of Egypt, an annexation made famous by the names of Kleopatra, Antonius, the elder and the younger Cæsar, completed the work. Rome was now fully mistress of her own civilized world. Her dominion took in all the lands round the great inland sea. If, here and there, her formal dominion was broken by a city or principality whose nominal relation was that of alliance, the distinction concerned only the local affairs of that city or principality. ♦Pax Romana.♦ Within the whole historic world of the three ancient continents, the Roman Peace had begun. Rome had still to wage wars, and even to annex provinces; but those wars and annexations were now done rather to round off and to strengthen the territory which had been already gained, than in the strictest sense to extend it.

§ 5. Conquests under the Empire.

At the same moment when the Roman commonwealth was practically changed into a monarchy, the Roman dominion was thus brought, not indeed to its greatest extent, but to an extent of which its further extension was only a natural completion. ♦Conquests under Augustus and Tiberius.♦ There seems a certain inconsistency when we find Augustus laying down a rule against the enlargement of the Empire, while the Empire was, during his reign and that of his successor, extended in every direction. But the conquests of this time were mainly conquests for the purpose of strengthening the frontier; the occasional changes of this and that city or district from the dependent to the provincial relation, or sometimes from the provincial to the dependent, are now hardly worth mentioning. ♦Incorporation of the dependent kingdoms.♦ Between Augustus and Nero, or, at all events, between Augustus and Vespasian, all the dependent states in Asia and Africa, such as Mauritania, Kappadokia, Lykia, and others, were finally incorporated with the Empire to which they had long been practically subject. These annexations can hardly be called conquests. And it was merely finishing a work which had been begun two hundred years before, when the small corner of Spain which still kept its independence was brought under the Roman power. ♦Strengthening of the frontier.♦ The real conquests of this time consisted in the strengthening of the European frontier. No frontier nearer than the Rhine and the Danube could be looked on as safe. This lesson was easily learned; but it had also to be accompanied by another lesson which taught that the Rhine and the Danube, and no more distant points, were to be the real frontiers of Rome.

This brings us both to the lands which were then our own and to the lands which became our own in after times. During the reign of Augustus two conquests which most nearly concern our own history were planned, and one of them was attempted. The annexation of the land which was to become England was talked of; the annexation of the land which then was England, along with the rest of the German lands, was seriously attempted. But the conquest of Britain was put off from the days of Augustus to the days of Claudius. ♦Attempted conquest of Germany. B.C. 11-A.D. 9.♦ The attempt at the conquest of Germany, which was deemed to have been already carried out, was shivered when Arminius overthrew the legions of Varus. ♦A.D. 19.♦ The expeditions of Drusus and Germanicus into Northern Germany must have brought the Roman armies into contact with our own forefathers, for the first time, and, for several ages, for the last time. But from this time the relations between Rome and southern Germany begin, and constantly increase in importance. The two great rivers were fixed as a real frontier. ♦Conquests on the Danube.♦ The lands between the Alps and the Danube, Rætia, Vindelicia, Noricum, Pannonia, with Mœsia on the lower Danube, were all added to the Empire during the reign of Augustus. These were strictly defensive annexations, annexations made in order to remove the dangerous frontier further from Italy. Beyond the Rhine and the Danube the Roman possessions were mere outposts held for the defence of the land between the two great streams.