Of less importance and probably of briefer duration was a similar work of Augustus on the coast of Gaul. Forum Julii (Fréjus) was raised by him to the rank of a naval station soon after the battle of Actium, and may have attained a certain degree of importance during the Cantabrian War; in the latter days of the empire we find no mention of any such naval port.
In Spain itself Augustus thought that he could dispense with a naval station on the Mediterranean coast, and he never dreamed of commanding the ocean. A naval base in the vicinity of Lisbon would have materially contributed to the conquest of the Asturians and Cantabrians, but only on condition that the Roman warships had been adapted to ocean navigation. The oared galleys of ancient days would hardly have proved seaworthy in the Atlantic. In the Spanish War a Roman fleet occasionally appears in the Bay of Biscay, but it was probably composed of transports from the neighbouring harbours of Gaul. Under Drusus and Germanicus the Rhine flotilla occasionally ventured out into the North Sea, but its constant mishaps soon frightened it out of risking farther hazards.
The emperor devoted some attention to his Mediterranean fleet, but far less than he bestowed on the army. In his summary Augustus makes frequent mention of his legions, while he rarely mentions the fleet to which he owed the victory of Actium. The army stood in quite a different relation to the princeps than was occupied by the navy. In the Monumentum Ancyranum the emperor invariably speaks of his navy: it is never styled the navy of the Roman people. The legions, on the contrary, belonged, in theory at least, to the state. The crews of the fleet and their officers were the personal servants of the princeps. The sailors, up to the grade of captain of a trireme, were slaves or freedmen, and were reckoned in law as belonging to the household of the emperor; and even the naval prefects, though free men, were not of Roman birth. Such were A. Castricius Myrio, and Sext. Aulienus, who worked his way up from the ranks to be a centurion and was then promoted to the rank of knight. An admiral of the imperial fleet (præfectus classis) ranked on the same footing with the imperial tax-collectors; a fact which speaks volumes for the position of the navy which had made Augustus an absolute monarch.
Augustus seems to have neglected the navy, especially in the latter years of his reign, from motives of economy. In the war with the Dalmatian rebels we hear nothing of the intervention of the Ravenna fleet when Bato was harassing the Adriatic shores as far as to Apollonia. The fact that the fleet at Misenum was in an equally melancholy state is proved by the insecurity of Sardinian waters, which was so great that no senator dared to land on the island; and it had to be administered by the emperor’s officers instead of by a regular governor.[c]
A Lictor
