The deserts in the southeast of the province of Syria were inhabited by free Arab tribes, which from the earliest times had led a roving and predatory life. Augustus acted as Pompey had done before him; he concluded a treaty and alliance with Malchus of Petra, the Nabatæan prince and successor to Aretas, and with the chieftain Iamblichus of Emesa, whose father, another Iamblichus, had been executed by Antony, guaranteeing to them the possession of their paternal inheritance on condition that they should ward off the predatory incursions of the sons of the desert. An attempt made by Ælius Gallus, governor of Egypt, to subjugate Arabia Felix in the year 24 ended miserably. The glare of the sun and the perils of the climate soon scared the invaders away and protected the natives from the Roman swords. The general of the Nabatæan prince, who had conducted the desert campaign, paid for his supposed treason with his life; but the disloyalty of the servant was not laid to his master’s charge.
Rome had still an affair of honour to settle with the Parthians; the day of Carrhæ was not yet requited and the blood of Crassus and his comrades cried for vengeance. Augustus nevertheless cherished no desire to expose himself and his legions to the darts of the iron horsemen. In this instance fortune again proved his ally. Parthia and Armenia, which at that time stood in intimate relations with one another, were distracted with quarrels over the succession. Tigranes, son of the unhappy Artavasdes, appealed for Roman aid against Artaxias, the nominee of the Parthian king. Tiberius invaded Armenia with an army, and bestowed the throne on the protégé of Rome, Artaxias having been slain by the natives at the general’s coming (20 B.C.). This catastrophe filled the Parthian king with apprehensions that the Romans might declare for the pretender Tiridates, and procure for himself a like fate with Artaxias. He therefore complied with the demands of Augustus and restored the Roman ensigns and the prisoners who had been detained in the far East ever since the disaster of Carrhæ. The emperor celebrated the restoration of the eagles by a sacrificial feast, as if it had been a victory, and dedicated a temple to Mars the Avenger.
But Armenia attained to no lasting tranquillity; at one time it was dominated by Roman influence, at another the Parthians gained the upper hand; kings were installed and exiled, quarrels for the throne and party feuds filled the land. Under Nero, the Parthian king Vologeses I set his brother Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, and thus fanned the embers of war between the Romans and Parthians to a blaze.
The perfidious Armenians themselves supplied occasions of strife by invoking the aid of Rome on the one hand to save themselves from falling completely under the sway of their eastern neighbour, and favouring the Parthians on the other, lest they should be oppressed by Rome. In local situation and similarity of manners they were, as Tacitus observes, more closely akin to the Parthians, with whom they intermarried freely; and were inclined to servitude by reason of their ignorance of liberty. At this time Domitius Corbulo won great renown and revived the terror of the Roman arms, even under the vilest of the emperors. Having restored discipline among the legions, he victoriously invaded the mountain country, took its principal towns, Artaxata and Tigranocerta, and set up a certain Tigranes as a Roman claimant to the throne and a rival to the Parthian pretender (58 B.C.). Tigranes and his successor, a scion of the Herod family, held their ground for five years by the aid of Rome; then the Parthians regained the ascendency and again bestowed the throne on their own candidate Tiridates, Cæsennius Pætus, Corbulo’s successor, being powerless to prevent this revolution. But when Corbulo himself advanced once more into Armenia with his army the Parthians despaired of being able to hold their own in defiance of Rome. They therefore effected a compromise. In an interview with Corbulo, Tiridates consented to lay down his royal fillet before the emperor’s image and to receive it back from his hand at Rome. From that time forward the peace of the Eastern provinces long remained undisturbed.
In the province of Asia little alteration was made in the existing state of things, the privileges of certain cities were increased or curtailed according to the position they had taken up during the civil wars, and restrictions were imposed on the right of sanctuary of the Ephesian Diana, which had made the city a harbourage for criminals. The fresh vigour which Augustus infused into the disordered commonwealth produced a splendid aftermath of prosperity in the ancient seats of civilisation. Under the sway of order, that “bounteous daughter of heaven,” the peaceful arts rose to fresh glory, and in the first century of the empire the province of Asia contained five hundred populous cities. From the Greek islands the Romans imported articles of luxury and sensuous enjoyment; Parian and Phrygian marbles for their gorgeous buildings; the wine of Chios, the sea fish of Rhodes, and the game of Asia Minor for their epicurean banquets. Ephesus and Apamea were the marts and emporiums for the produce and artistic productions of the East. Thence the Roman merchant brought his fine Babylonian tissues, his Arabian and Persian incense and ointments, his robes of Tyrian purple. In the island of Cos were made the fine female garments which displayed rather than concealed the limbs, the “Coan robes” against which Seneca so vehemently inveighs.
The provinces of Achaia and Macedonia underwent no great change; they had both long since grown accustomed to the Roman rule, and though the former (which embraced the territory of ancient Greece up to the Cambunian and Ceraunian mountains and the islands of the Ægean Sea) had not, like the latter, renounced all interest in political life, but had sided with one party or the other in the wars of the Roman despots, the Romans of those days were too ardent admirers of Greek culture to visit the transgressions of individuals upon the mother of humane studies as Sulla had done. Cæsar, Antony, and Augustus forgot with equal magnanimity the support which Pompey and Brutus had found amongst the fickle Hellenes, and requited their misdeeds with benefits. Augustus, however, tempered the full flood of favour which Antony had outpoured upon Athens, by emancipating the island of Samos, where he had several times made a long stay. But great as was the consideration extended to Hellas, her vital force was broken; she had lost the capacity of rising to healthy political life.
Augustus devoted the closest attention to his adoptive father’s Celtic conquests and his own acquisitions on the Nile. The wide region of Gaul, on the far side of the Alps, received its first stable provincial organisation at his hands. Cæsar, its conqueror, had not had time to secure and consolidate what his sword had won by a permanent organisation; the old system of local divisions was still in force, taxation was unequal and arbitrary. Augustus put an end to this lax condition of things; in an assembly of the most distinguished chiefs and elders at Narbo he defined afresh the divisions of the country, and at the same time undertook a census of the inhabitants and their landed property, with a view to a more equitable distribution of the public burdens.
Three new provinces were added to the old provincial territory, which last bore from that time forth the name of Narbonensian Gaul. They were Aquitania, from the Pyrenees and Cevennes to the Loire; Gallia Lugdunensis, between the Loire, Seine, and Marne, and extending to Lugdunum on the east; and Belgica, the great northern tract, in which the Sequani and Helvetii were also included. The new towns of the Rhone—Vienna, Lugdunum, Augustodunum (Autun), and Burdigala (Bordeaux)—soon vied with the old province in wealth, commercial activity, and culture, with Massilia, Nemausus, Arelate, and Narbo. Lugdunum (Lyons), whither the military roads led from every side, rose to great importance. At the point where the Araris (Saone) mingles with the Rhodanus the Gallic tribes erected a magnificent memorial and temple to the emperor Augustus, and the anniversary of its dedication was thenceforth kept as a national holiday, with musical and gymnastic entertainments.
In the north, Augusta Trevirorum (Trèves) became the centre of Roman civilisation; under the benediction of peace agriculture, industry, and prosperity arose on all sides. The country on the left bank of the Rhine, inhabited for the most part by German tribes, was placed under a separate military administration under the name of Upper and Lower Germania. To guard the Rhenish frontier from the warlike Germans, strong permanent camps and bulwarks were erected along the river, and the army of occupation was gradually raised to eight legions. Then began the building of cities on the banks of the beautiful frontier river. Cologne was specially favoured by exemption from taxes and other privileges.
Augustus devoted the same care and circumspection to the ordering of his possessions beyond the Mediterranean. The territory of Carthage and the kingdom of Numidia, formerly divided into two proconsulates, were now united to form the province of “Africa.” This was bordered on the west by the independent kingdom of Mauretania, which Augustus after some hesitation bestowed upon Juba, a loyal and devoted subject prince, till the time came for its incorporation into the world-empire in the reign of Claudius. To the east of the great Syrtis the fertile region of Cyrene stretched right to the borders of Egypt, and was combined with Crete to form a second province.