Augustus in Greece B.C. 21.
From Sicily Augustus passed to Greece and wintered at Samos. Achaia was a senatorial province, but the Emperor, we may notice, exercised complete authority there. He had already established two colonies—at Actium and Patræ, and he seems to have devoted most of his attention to promoting their interests. He compelled the inhabitants of several townships in the neighbourhood of both towns to migrate to the new colonies, and he insisted on the colony at Actium being admitted to the Amphictyonic League. The places were well chosen for naval purposes, but the element of compulsion in his policy towards them was unfortunate. He does not appear to have done much for Greece generally. It was in a lamentably decaying state, the population declining, and old towns disappearing. Nearly the only exception was the Iulian colony at Corinth. Such changes as Augustus made on this visit rather tended to emphasise this state of things, and certainly did nothing to relieve it. Athens, which retained nothing of its greatness except its past and the still surviving reputation as a university town (though Marseilles was running it hard even in that), had disgraced itself in his eyes by the display of sympathy, first for the Pompeians against Iulius, again for Brutus and Cassius against the triumvirs, and lastly for Antony against himself. A town always on the losing side can expect little favour. It was deprived of its few remaining extra-Attic dependencies, Ægina and Eretria, and was forbidden to avail itself of almost the only source of revenue left—the fees which certain persons were still willing to pay for the honour of being enrolled as its citizens. Sparta, indeed, was rewarded by the restoration of Cythera, in return, it is said, for hospitality to Livia when in exile with her former husband; but, on the other hand, it was deprived of the control over its harbour town of Gythium. But though both Iulius and Augustus favoured Sparta, as against Athens—a fact commemorated by a temple to Iulius and an altar to Augustus—it remained completely insignificant.
Very different was his policy in Asia. There Augustus set himself to restore the prosperity of the towns by grants of money, by relief from or readjustment of tribute, and by the promotion of useful public works. Nor were details of local administration and internal reforms neglected. Edicts are preserved which touch on such matters as the age of local magistrates, or the succession to the property of intestates in Bithynia, shewing with what minute care he studied local interests and problems. It was now probably that schemes were set on foot for opening up the country by roads, afterwards carried out by his legates. Milestones are being now discovered along the via Sebaste connecting the six Pisidian colonies dated in the eighteenth year of his tribunician power (B.C. 6) and a marble temple to Augustus still stands at Ancyra (Angora), to witness the gratitude of these Asiatic cities. At the same time disorder or illegal conduct was sternly punished. Cyzicus was deprived of its libertas for having flogged and put to death some Roman citizens, and the same punishment was awarded for their internal disorders to Tyre and Sidon, whose ancient liberties had been secured to them by Antony when he handed over the country to Cleopatra.
Return of the standards by the Parthians.
But of all his achievements during this progress nothing made such a sensation in the Roman world, or was so much celebrated by the poets of the day, as the fact that he received back from the Parthian king the Roman eagles and standards lost by Crassus in B.C. 53, by Antony’s legate Decidius Saxa in B.C. 40, and by Antony himself in B.C. 36 in a battle with Parthians and Medes. Those taken by the Medes had been returned to him, but not those taken by the Parthians. In B.C. 23 Tiridates, who had been allowed to take refuge in Syria in B.C. 30, came to Rome, and Phraates, to counteract his appeal, sent ambassadors thither also. After consulting the Senate Augustus declined to give up Tiridates, but he sent back to Phraates the son whom he had kept at Rome for the last six years on condition that the king should restore the standards. Pressed though he was by the disaffection of his subjects, Phraates had not yet fulfilled his bargain. But perhaps this disaffection had by B.C. 20 become more acute, or he was alarmed by the promptness with which Augustus asserted Roman supremacy in Armenia. Artaxes had ruled ill and had been insubordinate. Augustus appears to have meditated an expedition against him, but his subjects anticipated the difficulty by assassinating him. Augustus says that he might have made Armenia a province, but preferred to allow the ancient kingdom to remain. Accordingly on his order Tiberius went to Armenia and with his own hand placed the diadem on the head of Tigranes, brother of the late king, who had been living in exile at Rome. Thus the supremacy of Augustus was acknowledged in Armenia and its king ruled by his permission. A coin struck in B.C. 19 represents it as a real capture of Armenia, having on its reverse Cæsar Div. F. Armen. capt. Imp. viiii. The Parthian king thought it well now to fulfil his bargain, and again Tiberius was commissioned to receive the captured standards in Syria. With the standards were also some prisoners; though there were others who had in the thirty-three years that had elapsed since the fall of Crassus settled peaceably in Parthian territory, married wives, and now refused to return.[260] Such a contented abandonment of their native land seemed shocking to the orthodox Roman, unable to suppose life worth living among barbarians for one who had once been a citizen of the Eternal City. Prisoners of war were never much valued at Rome. It was the traditional maxim that the state never paid ransom, though private friends might and did, and Horace’s ode may be meant to support the Emperor’s refusal of some demand of Phraates for ransom of prisoners to accompany the standards. This transaction, however, was the crown of the Emperor’s work in the East. It is commemorated on coins of B.C. 19 bearing a triumphal arch, with Augustus receiving the standards, on the obverse, and the legend civibus et signis militaribus a Parthis receptis on the reverse. The poets were not behind with their compliments. Vergil, who was in Greece in this the last year of his life, seems to have inserted three lines in his description of opening the doors of Bellona to bring in an allusion to it.[261] Horace, who had for the time given up lyric poetry, yet contrives a compliment in one of his epistles;[262] and, on returning to lyric poetry in B.C. 13-12, is careful to include it among the great services of Augustus; and Propertius, after prophetic suggestions as to what will be done, at last burst out into a triumphant hymn of praise over the achievements of these years, and, above all, on the Nemesis that has come for the slaughtered Crassus.[263] Many years afterwards Ovid takes the opportunity in describing the temple of Mars Ultor, in which Augustus deposited the recovered standards, to glorify him for having wiped out an old and shameful stain upon the Roman arms.[264] There were many other arrangements made with the client kings of Asia, all of which were accompanied by the strict condition that they were henceforth to confine themselves to the territories now assigned to them and were to make no wars of aggression. The pax augusta was to be strictly maintained everywhere.
Augustus returns from the East, B.C. 19.
All this had been done without any drop of blood shed in war, and Augustus was able to devote the winter of B.C. 20-19 at Samos to rest and enjoyment, receiving numerous embassies from all parts, as far as from India. The Indian envoys brought him a present of tigers, a beast never before seen in Greece or Italy, and a wonderful armless dwarf who could draw a bow and throw javelins with his feet. He returned next year by way of Athens, where he was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries and where he met with Vergil. The poet joined the Emperor’s train, visited Megara with him, and returned with him to Italy, only to fall ill at Brundisium and die (September 22).
Troubles in the West. Defeat of Lollius, B.C. 16.
Though Augustus returned to Rome amidst loud congratulations, the Western part of the Empire was not yet at peace, and in fact there were many threatening signs of future trouble. Agrippa, indeed, in the very year of the Emperor’s return from the East, crushed the rebellious Cantabri and Astures, not without severe fighting; but though Augustus was able now to remain at home, passing laws, holding the secular games, and strengthening his family by adopting Agrippa’s children, the Empire was not at peace, the Ianus Quirinus still stood open. There were, in fact, a number of “little wars,” mostly frontier raids. Thus in B.C. 17-16, P. Silius Nerva was engaged with various Alpine tribes, and in repelling an inroad of Pannonians. There were also about the same time brief outbursts in Spain and Dalmatia, and inroads of barbarous tribes (Dentheletæ and Scordisci) into Macedonia. In Thrace the guardian of the sons of Cotys had to be assisted against the Bessi, and the Sauromatæ had to be driven back across the Danube. These were comparatively unimportant affairs, But a more serious danger was caused by some warlike German tribes—Sugambri, Usipetes, and Tencteri—crossing the Rhine and invading Gallia Belgica. They defeated some Roman cavalry, and while pursuing them came up with Lollius and his main army, which they again defeated, capturing the eagle of the Fifth Legion. Suetonius says that the affair was rather disgraceful than really disastrous. But it seemed sufficiently serious to Augustus. Agrippa was away in the East looking after Syria and Asia, and did not return till B.C. 13; and he resolved to go to Gaul himself, taking with him Tiberius, and leaving Drusus to carry on the latter’s prætorship. The Germans, however, had no wish to fight a regular imperial army, they therefore retired beyond the Rhine, and made terms and gave hostages.
Administration of Gaul, B.C. 16-14.