The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1

by Theodor Mommsen

Campaign against Maroboduus.It might have been thought that the goal was reached. But one thing was still wanting to the establishment of the iron ring which was to surround the Great Germany; it was the establishment of a connection between the middle Danube and the upper Elbe—the occupation of the old home of the Boii, which with its mountain–cincture planted itself like a gigantic fortress between Noricum and Germany. The king Maroboduus, of noble Marcomanian lineage, but in his youth by prolonged residence in Rome introduced to its firmer military and political organisation, had after his return home—perhaps during the first campaign of Drusus and the transmigration, thereby brought about, of the Marcomani from the Main to the upper Elbe—not merely raised himself to be prince of his people, but had also moulded his rule not after the loose fashion of the Germanic kings, but, one might say, after the model of the Augustan. Besides his own people, he ruled over the powerful tribe of the Lugii (in what is now Silesia), and the body of his clients must have extended over the whole region of the Elbe, as the Langobardi and the Semnones are described as subject to him. Hitherto he had observed entire neutrality in presence of the other Germans as of the Romans. He gave perhaps to the fugitive enemies of the Romans an asylum in his country, but he did not actively mingle in the strife, not even when the Hermunduri had settlements assigned to them by the Roman governor on Marcomanian territory ([p. 31]), and when the left bank of the Elbe became subject to the Romans. He did not submit to them, but he bore all these occurrences without interrupting, on that account, his friendly relations with the Romans. By this certainly not magnanimous and scarce even so much as prudent policy, he had gained this much, that he was the last to be attacked; after the completely successful Germanic campaigns in the years 4 and 5 his turn came. From two sides—from Germany and Noricum—the Roman armies advanced against the Bohemian mountain–circle; Gaius Sentius Saturninus, advanced up the Main, clearing the dense forests from Spessart to the Fichtelgebirge with axe and fire; while Tiberius in person, starting from Carnuntum, where the Illyrian legions had encamped during the winter of the years 5–6, advanced against the Marcomani. The two armies, amounting together to twelve legions, were even in number so superior as almost to double that of their opponents, whose fighting force was estimated at 70,000 infantry and 4000 horsemen. The cautious strategy of the general seemed on this occasion also to have quite ensured success, when a sudden incident interrupted the farther advance of the Romans.

Dalmato–Pannonian insurrection. The Dalmatian tribes and the Pannonians, at least of the region of the Save, for a short time obeyed the Roman governors; but they bore the new rule with an ever increasing grudge, above all on account of the taxes, to which they were unaccustomed, and which were relentlessly exacted. When Tiberius subsequently asked one of the leaders as to the grounds of the revolt, he answered that it had taken place because the Romans set not dogs and shepherds, but wolves, to guard their flocks. Now the legions from Dalmatia were brought to the Danube, and the men capable of arms were called out, in order to be sent thither to reinforce the armies. These troops made a beginning, and took up arms not for, but against, Rome. Their leader was one of the Daesitiatae (around Serajevo), Bato. The example was followed by the Pannonians, under the leadership of two Breuci, another Bato and Pinnes. All Illyricum rose with unheard of rapidity and unanimity. The number of the insurgent forces was estimated at 200,000 infantry and 9000 horsemen. The levy for the auxiliary troops, which had taken place more especially among the Pannonians to a considerable extent, had diffused more widely a knowledge of Roman warfare, along with the Roman language and even Roman culture. Those who had served as Roman soldiers formed now the nucleus of the insurrection.[14] The Roman citizens settled or sojourning in large number in the insurgent regions, the merchants, and above all, the soldiers, were everywhere seized and slain. The independent tribes, as well as those of the provinces, entered into the movement. The princes of the Thracians, entirely devoted to the Romans, certainly brought their considerable and brave bands to the aid of the Roman generals; but from the other bank of the Danube the Dacians, and with them the Sarmatae, broke into Moesia. The whole wide region of the Danube seemed to have conspired to put an abrupt end to the foreign rule.

The insurgents were not disposed to await attack, but planned an invasion of Macedonia, and even of Italy. The danger was serious; the insurgents might, by crossing the Julian Alps, stand in a few days once more before Aquileia and Tergeste—they had not yet forgotten the way thither—and in ten days before Rome, as the emperor himself expressed it in the senate, to make sure at all events of its assent to the comprehensive and urgent military preparations. In the utmost haste new forces were raised, and the towns more immediately threatened were provided with garrisons; in like manner whatever troops could be dispensed with were despatched to the threatened points. The first to arrive at the spot was the governor of Moesia, Aulus Caecina Severus, and with him the Thracian king Rhoemetalces; soon other troops followed from the transmarine provinces. But above all Tiberius was obliged, instead of penetrating into Bohemia, to return to Illyricum. Had the insurgents waited till the Romans were engaged in the struggle with Maroboduus, or had the latter made common cause with them, the position might have been a very critical one for the Romans. But the former broke loose too early, and the latter, faithful to his system of neutrality, condescended just at this time to conclude peace with the Romans on the basis of the status quo. Thus Tiberius had, no doubt, to send back the Rhine–legions, because Germany could not possibly be denuded of troops, but he could unite his Illyrian army with the troops arriving from Moesia, Italy, and Syria, and employ it against the insurgents. In fact the alarm was greater than the danger. The Dalmatians, indeed, broke repeatedly into Macedonia and pillaged the coast as far as Apollonia; but there was no invasion of Italy, and the fire was soon confined to its original hearth.

Nevertheless, the work of the war was not easy; here, as everywhere, the renewed overthrow of the subjects was more laborious than the subjugation itself. Never in the Augustan period was such a body of troops ever united under the same command; already in the first year of the war the army of Tiberius consisted of ten legions along with the corresponding auxiliary forces, and in addition numerous veterans who had again joined of their own accord and other volunteers, together about 120,000 men; later he had fifteen legions united under his banners.[15] In the first campaign (6 A.D.) the contest was waged with very varying fortune; the large places, like Siscia and Sirmium, were successfully protected against the insurgents, but the Dalmatian Bato fought as obstinately and in part successfully against the governor of Pannonia, Marcus Valerius Messalla, the orator’s son, as his Pannonian namesake against Aulus Caecina governor of Moesia. The petty warfare above all gave much trouble to the Roman troops. Nor did the following year (7), in which along with Tiberius his nephew the young Germanicus appeared on the scene of war, put an end to the ceaseless conflicts. It was not till the third campaign (8) that the Romans succeeded in subduing in the first instance the Pannonians, chiefly, as it would seem, through the circumstance that their leader, gained over by the Romans, induced his troops all and sundry to lay down their arms at the river Bathinus, and surrendered his colleague in the supreme command, Pinnes, to the Romans, for which he was recognised by them as prince of the Breuci. Punishment indeed soon befell the traitor; his Dalmatian namesake caught him and had him executed, and once more the revolt blazed up among the Breuci; but it was speedily extinguished again, and the Dalmatian was confined to the defence of his own home. There Germanicus and other leaders of division had in this, as in the following year (9), to sustain vehement conflicts in the several cantons; in the latter year the Pirustae (on the borders of Epirus) and the canton to which the leader himself belonged, the Daesitiatae, were subdued, one bravely defended stronghold being reduced after another. Once more in the course of the summer Tiberius himself took the field, and set in motion all his fighting force against the remains of the insurrection. Even Bato, shut up by the Roman army in the strong Andetrium (Much, above Salonae), his last place of refuge, gave up the cause as lost. He left the town, when he could not induce the desperadoes to submit, and yielded himself to the victor, with whom he found honourable treatment; he was relegated as a political prisoner to Ravenna, where he died. Without their leader the troops still for a time continued the vain struggle, till the Romans captured the fort by assault—it is probably this day, the 3d August, that is recorded in the Roman calendar as the anniversary of the victory achieved by Tiberius in Illyricum.

Dacian war of Lentulus.Retribution fell also on the Dacians beyond the Danube. Probably at this time, after the Illyrian war was decided in favour of Rome, Gnaeus Lentulus led a strong Roman army across the Danube, reached as far as the Marisus (Marosch) and emphatically defeated them in their own country, which was then for the first time trodden by a Roman army. Fifty thousand captive Dacians were made to settle in Thrace.

Men of later times termed the “Batonian war” of the years 6–9 the most severe which Rome had to sustain against an external foe since that of Hannibal. It inflicted severe wounds on the Illyrian land; in Italy the joy over the victory was boundless when the young Germanicus brought the news of the decisive success to the capital. The exultation did not last long; almost simultaneously with the news of this success there came to Rome accounts of a defeat, such as reached the ears of Augustus but once in his reign of fifty years—a defeat which was still more significant in its consequences than in itself.

Germanic rising. The state of things in the province of Germany has been already set forth. The recoil which follows on any foreign rule with the inevitableness of a natural event, and which had just set in in the Illyrian land, was in preparation also among the cantons of the middle Rhine. The remnants of the tribes settled immediately on the Rhine were indeed quite discouraged; but those dwelling farther back, especially the Cherusci, Chatti, Bructeri, Marsi, were less injuriously affected and by no means powerless. As always in such cases, there was formed in every canton a party of the compliant friends of the Romans, and a national party preparing in secret a renewed rising. The soul of the latter was a young man of twenty–six years, of the Cheruscan princely house, Arminius son of Sigimer; he and his brother Flavus had received from the emperor Augustus the gifts of Roman citizenship and of equestrian rank,[16] and both had fought with distinction as officers in the last Roman campaigns under Tiberius; the brother was still serving in the Roman army and had established a home for himself in Italy. Naturally Arminius also was regarded by the Romans as a man specially to be trusted; the accusations, which his better informed countryman Segestes brought forward against him, availed not to shake this confidence in view of the well–known hostility subsisting between the two. Of the further preparations we have no knowledge; that the nobility and especially the noble youth took the side of the patriots, was a matter of course, and found clear expression in the fact that Segestes’s own daughter, Thusnelda, in spite of the prohibition of her father, married Arminius, while her brother Segimundus and Segestes’s brother Segimer, as well as his nephew Sesithacus, played a prominent part in the insurrection. It had not a wide range, far less than that of the Illyrian rising; it can scarcely in strictness be called a Germanic revolt; the Batavi, the Frisii, the Chauci on the coast took no part in it, as little such of the Suebian tribes as were under Roman rule, still less king Maroboduus; in reality only those Germans rose who had some years previously leagued themselves against Rome, and against whom the offensive of Drusus was primarily directed. The Illyrian rising doubtless promoted the ferment in Germany, but there is no trace of any thread of connection between the two similar and almost contemporary insurrections; had such a connection subsisted the Germans would hardly have waited to strike till the Pannonian rising had been overpowered and the very last strongholds in Dalmatia were surrendering. Arminius was the brave and shrewd, and above all things fortunate, leader in the conflict of despair over the lost national independence—nothing less, but also nothing more.

Varus.It was more the fault of the Romans than the merit of the insurgents, if the plan of the latter succeeded. So far, certainly, the Illyrian war had an effect on Germany. The able generals, and to all appearance also the experienced troops, had been moved from the Rhine to the Danube. The Germanic army was apparently not diminished, but the greatest part of it consisted of new legions formed during the war. Still worse was its position as to leaders. The governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus,[17] was, no doubt, the husband of a niece of the emperor, and a man of ill–acquired, but princely, wealth and of princely arrogance, but inert in body and obtuse in mind, and without any military gifts or experience—one of those many Romans in high station who, in consequence of an adherence to the old mixture of administrative functions with those of higher command, wore the general’s scarf after the model of Cicero. He knew not how to spare nor yet to see through the new subjects; oppression and exaction were practised, as had been the wont of his earlier governorship over the patient Syria; the headquarters swarmed with advocates and clients; and in grateful humility the conspirators especially received judgment and justice at his hands, while the net was being drawn more and more closely around the arrogant praetor.

The position of the army was what was then the normal one. There were at least five legions in the province, two of which had their winter–quarters at Mogontiacum, three in Vetera or else in Aliso. The latter had taken up their summer encampment in the year 9 on the Weser. The natural route of communication from the upper Lippe to the Weser leads over the low chain of heights of the Osning and of the Lippe Forest, which separates the valley of the Ems from that of the Weser, through the Dören defile into the valley of the Werra, which falls into the Weser at Rehme, not far from Minden. Here therefore, approximately, the legions of Varus at that time were encamped. As a matter of course this summer camp was connected with Aliso, the base of the Roman position on the right bank of the Rhine, by a road supplied with depots. The good season of the year came to its close, and they were making ready for the return march, when the news came that a neighbouring canton was in revolt; and Varus resolved, instead of leading back the army by that depot–route, to take a circuit and by the way to bring back the rebels to allegiance.[18] So they set out; the army consisted, after numerous reductions, of three legions and nine divisions of troops of the second class, together about 20,000 men.[19] When the army had removed to a sufficient distance from its line of communication, and penetrated far enough into the pathless country, the confederates in the neighbouring cantons rose, cut down the small divisions of troops stationed among them, and broke forth on all sides from the defiles and woods against the army of Varus on its march. Arminius and the most notable leaders of the patriots had remained to the last moment at the Roman headquarters to make Varus secure. On the very evening before the day on which the insurrection burst forth they had supped in the general’s tent with Varus; and Segestes, when announcing the impending outbreak of the revolt, had adjured the general to order the immediate arrest of himself as well as of the accused, and to await the justification of his charge by the facts. The confidence of Varus was not to be shaken. Arminius rode away from table to the insurgents, and was next day before the ramparts of the Roman camp. The military situation was neither better nor worse than that of the army of Drusus before the battle at Arbalo, and than had, under similar circumstances, often been the plight of Roman armies. The communications were for the moment lost; the army, encumbered with heavy baggage in a pathless country and at a bad rainy season in autumn, was separated by several days’ march from Aliso; the assailants were beyond doubt far superior in number to the Romans. In such cases it is the solid quality of the troops that is decisive; and, if the decision here for once was unfavourable to the Romans, the result was doubtless mostly due to the inexperience of the young soldiers, and especially to the want of head and of courage in the general. After the attack took place the Roman army continued its march, now beyond doubt in the direction of Aliso, amidst constantly increasing pressure and increasing demoralisation. Even the higher officers failed in part to do their duty; one of them rode away from the field of battle with all the cavalry, and left the infantry to sustain the conflict alone. The first to despair utterly was the general himself; wounded in the struggle, he put himself to death before the matter was finally decided, so early indeed, that his followers still made an attempt to burn the dead body and to withdraw it from being dishonoured by the enemy. A number of the superior officers followed his example. Then, when all was lost, the leader that was left surrendered, and thereby put out of his own power what remained open to these last—an honourable soldier’s death. Thus perished the Germanic army in one of the valleys of the mountain–range that bounds the region of Münster, in the autumn of the year 9 A.D.[20] The eagles fell—all three of them—into the enemy’s hand. Not a division cut its way through, not even those horsemen who had left their comrades in the lurch; only a few who were isolated and dispersed were able to effect their escape. The captives, especially the officers and the advocates, were fastened to the cross, or buried alive, or bled under the sacrificial knife of the German priests. The heads cut off were nailed as a token of victory to the trees of the sacred grove. Far and wide the land rose against the foreign rule; it was hoped that Maroboduus would join the movement; the Roman posts and roads on the whole right bank of the Rhine fell without further trouble into the power of the victors. Only in Aliso, the brave commandant Lucius Caedicius, not an officer, but a veteran soldier, offered a resolute resistance, and his archers were enabled to make the encampment before the walls so annoying to the Germans, who possessed no weapons for distant fighting, that they converted the siege into a blockade. When the last stores of the besieged were exhausted, and still no relief came, Caedicius broke out one dark night; and this remnant of the army, though burdened with numerous women and children, and suffering severe losses through the assaults of the Germans, in reality ultimately reached the camp at Vetera. Thither also the two legions stationed in Mentz under Lucius Nonius Asprenas had gone on the news of the disaster. The resolute defence of Aliso, and the rapid intervention of Asprenas, hindered the Germans from following up the victory on the left bank of the Rhine, and perhaps the Gauls from rising against Rome.