XII
The Mutinies in Pannonia and on the Rhine
We have seen that when Augustus died Tiberius was on his way to Illyria, because the temper of the three legions who garrisoned the recently conquered districts towards the Danube had given cause for anxiety. The death of one Emperor and the accession of another occasioned a relaxation of discipline, both events, in accordance with Roman custom, being observed by a suspension of ordinary business.
The Pannonian army had been reinforced largely from Rome itself; it had been necessary to revive in a stringent form the obligation to military service, and even to impress slaves. Among the men thus unwillingly driven into the ranks were several used to the clubs and street factions of the capital, quick-witted, ready-tongued, of the class that are known to our own soldiers and sailors as “lawyers.”
Service in these regions had no mitigations, there was little or no loot, and since serious operations had ceased, little excitement; the long holiday and cessation of the ordinary routine gave the camp agitators their opportunity. Three legions were concerned, the eighth, the ninth, and the fifteenth. The first open act of mutiny was an attempt to combine all three in one. This failed, owing to the mutual jealousies of the legions, neither of the three being willing to be enrolled under the name of one of the others, and a compromise was effected by uniting the legions locally, but retaining their separate organization. The rapid and dramatic account of Tacitus, in which only the most picturesque incidents are recorded and grouped together for effect, conceals the fact that this was a very serious step, for the legions were not quartered together, and must have marched some distance in order to unite. This event, which Tacitus places at the beginning of his summary, can only have taken place after the officers had lost the control of their men, unless we are to credit these officers, who knew that there was much disaffection, and had already reported it to Rome, with such blind folly as to have united troops ready to mutiny.
The speech which Tacitus puts into the mouth of one Percennius, the arch agitator, a private who had been accustomed to lead a claque in the Roman theatres, and was well versed in the arts by which factions are organized, gives a clear summary of the grievances of the Roman soldier of the period, but will not be intelligible without a little previous explanation.
First comes the question of discharge. A Roman citizen was constitutionally liable to be called out for service between the ages of eighteen and forty-six, but it was held that sixteen years of service, whether continuous or intermittent, exempted a man from further duty. The difficulty of finding recruits had caused the claim to exemption to be ignored, and as the army had become increasingly professional, losing its character of a militia, the men themselves, for lack of other occupation, had helped the authorities to expand the period of service. In order further to swell the numbers of the army, the Romans had anticipated the “garrison” service recently introduced into the English army. Time-expired men were enrolled in companies outside the organization of the legion; they were called flagmen (vexillarii); they could not be called upon to march in a campaign, but they formed a kind of permanent garrison in the countries in which they were employed; they were not a “reserve,” for they could not be called back to the colours, but they relieved the regular soldiers of duties, for which there was a dearth of men; they were also employed as engineers, for we find some of them in the course of this mutiny detached to build roads and bridges near Nauportus.
There was also a grievance of pay. Cæsar had increased the pay of the legionary, and fixed it at nine aurei a year; that is to say, ten asses a day. When this arrangement was made one silver denarius was the equivalent of ten copper asses, and the pay of the Roman soldier was assumed to be one denarius, practically a shilling a day; but since Cæsar’s time the silver denarius had appreciated, and was now worth sixteen asses: the soldiers, however, were still paid ten asses, and not sixteen. Another grievance lay in the fact that the household troops, prætorian guards, who formed the garrison of Italy, received double pay.
The exactions and cruelty of the centurions formed another grievance. The position of the centurion in the Roman army is not quite analogous to anything in our own army, for though there was a distinction between the commissioned and the non-commissioned officer, and the centurion belonged in many respects to the latter class, he had many responsibilities which we, rightly or wrongly, reserve for commissioned officers. The centurion was selected from the ranks, but he commanded a company; he was a sergeant with the duties of a captain, and when he was promoted to the rank of “primipilaris” was so much of a commissioned officer as to be admitted to councils of war. Cæsar had paid especial attention to the centurions, he never misses an opportunity of praising individual centurions in his commentaries, and distinguished service as a centurion opened the way to the highest military and even civil positions. Ventidius Bassus, who had commanded the armies of Antonius in Syria, and had been granted a triumph, began life as a mule-driver, and passed through the rank of centurion to that of General. Before the end of the century a former centurion was to be Emperor. Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judæa, is said to have been a centurion. One of the arts by which the early Emperors kept their hold on the army was the recognition of capable centurions. But though the centurion was in a better position than the English non-commissioned officer, he still had duties which we should consider beneath the dignity of a captain.
With the aid of this short introduction the speech of Percennius should be intelligible without further explanation; it is not probable that we have the genuine speech, but a summary of the soldiers’ grievances put into the mouth of their spokesman.