Nor can I discover in general the justice of accusing Tiberius of neglecting the safety of his remote possessions, which seem, on the contrary, to have flourished securely in the armed peace of his august empire. In Gaul the revolt of Sacrovir and his Belgian confederates was effectually suppressed; the outbreak of the Frisians, though at some cost of blood, seems to have been speedily quelled. Nor have we any distinct confirmation of the assertion of Suetonius, that Tiberius suffered the province to be ravaged with impunity by the Germani, which, if true, can apply only to some transient violation of the frontiers.
Nor does the assertion of Tiberius’ indifference seem to be better founded with regard to Mœsia. Tacitus steps frequently aside from his domestic narrative to record the affairs of this region and the exploits of the emperor’s lieutenants; while Appian makes special mention of the conquest of Mœsia under Tiberius, and of the establishment of provincial government in this quarter by his hand.[10] Sabinus, Pandus, and Labeo seem to have held the command there successively during the first half of this principate, and these men at least were not allowed to indulge in indolence, for their exertions and victories are a theme to which the historian repeatedly refers.
But the emptiness of these charges can be more clearly shown in the case of the dependent kingdom of Armenia, which, according to the same authority, Tiberius suffered to be seized by the Parthians, and wrested from the patronage of the empire. It appears, on the contrary, from the particular recital of Tacitus, that the bold occupation of this kingdom by Artabanus was immediately resented by the emperor with the energy of a younger man. Not only were the wild mountaineers of the Caucasus, the Iberians and Albanians, invited to descend upon the intruders; not only were the sons of Phraates released from their long detention at Rome, and directed to present themselves on their native soil, and claim the allegiance of their father’s subjects; but a Roman general, L. Vitellius, a man of distinguished valour and experience, was deputed to lead the forces of Asia and Syria against the enemy; and while it was hoped that a vigorous demonstration would suffice to hurl him back from the territory in dispute, instructions were not withheld, it would appear, to push on if necessary, and smite the Parthians with the strong hand of the empire. But these combinations proved speedily successful. Artabanus, already detested by many of his most powerful subjects, was compelled to descend from his throne, and take refuge in the far wilds of Hyrcania; while Tiridates, the son of Phraates, was accepted in his room [35 A.D.]. The Roman army, which had crossed the Euphrates, returned victorious without striking a blow, though, by a subsequent revolution, Artabanus was not long afterwards restored, and admitted, upon giving the required hostages, to the friendship of his lordly rivals [36 A.D.].
[4 B.C.-37 A.D.]
If Tiberius refrained from aggrandising his empire by fresh conquests, he was not the less intent on consolidating the unwieldy mass by the gradual incorporation of the dependent kingdoms enclosed within its limits. The contests between two rival brothers, Cotys and Rhescuporis, in Thrace, gave him a pretext for placing the fairest part of that country under the control of a Roman officer, thus preparing the way for its ultimate annexation. On the death of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, in the year 17, his country was declared a Roman province, and subjected to the rule of an imperial procurator. At the same period the frontier kingdom of Commagene was added to the dominions of the republic under the government of a prætor. Syria, the great stronghold of the Roman power in the East, was still skirted by several tributary kingdoms or ethnarchies, such as Chalcis, Emesa, Damascus, and Abilene; but the dependency of Judea, the wealthiest and proudest of all these vassal states, was wrested in the reign of Augustus from the dynasty to which it had been entrusted, and was still subjected by his successor to the control of the proconsul at Antioch.
Herod the Great, on his death-bed, had sent his seal, together with an ample present, to Augustus, in token of the entire dependence upon Rome in which he held his dominions [4 B.C.]. This act of vassalage procured him, perhaps, the ratification of the disposition he had made of his territories between Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philippus. To the first was allotted the kingdom of Judea, including Samaria and Idumæa, but with the loss of the cities of Gaza, Gadara, and Hippus, which were now annexed to the government of Syria. To the second fell the districts of Galilee to the west, and Peræa to the east of the Jordan; while the Trachonitis, Auranitis, and Gaulonitis formed with Ituræa the tetrarchy of Philip, extending northward to the desert borders of Damascus. But the rival kinsmen were not satisfied with this division. Archelaus and Antipas repaired to Rome to plead against one another; but while they were urging their suits before the tribunal of the senate, the provisional government which the Romans had established in Judea was suddenly attacked on all sides by bodies of armed insurgents. Their leaders, however, were not men of rank or commanding influence, and the revolt was in no sense a national movement. It was speedily crushed by Varus, then proconsul of Syria, the same who ten years afterwards perished so miserably in Germany, and punished with the atrocious severity too commonly employed in such cases. Archelaus, confirmed in his sovereignty, continued to reign under these lamentable auspices in Judea. His subjects, still mindful of the sons of their beloved Mariamne, never regarded him with favour; and it has been mentioned how they complained to Augustus of his tyranny, and obtained his removal from the throne. He was finally sent into exile at Vienne in Gaul.
The fall of Archelaus left the throne of Judea and Samaria without a direct claimant, and the emperor took the opportunity of attaching them to the Roman dominions. This acquisition was placed under the general administration of the proconsul of Syria, but governed more directly by an imperial procurator, who took up his abode at Cæsarea Philippi. Of the character of the new government we find no complaints even in the Jewish writers whose accounts of this period have been preserved to us.
Both Augustus and his successor appear to have instructed their officers to observe the same respect for the peculiar habits and prejudices of the Jews which had reflected such lustre in their eyes upon the magnanimous Agrippa; whatever may have been the ordinary severities of Roman domination, it was not till the arrival of Pontius Pilate, about the middle of the reign of Tiberius, that any special cause of grievance was inflicted upon them. They complained that the new procurator commenced his career with a grave and wanton insult. He entered Jerusalem with standards flying, upon which, according to the usage of the time, the image of the emperor was displayed. The old religious feeling of the Jews against the representation of the human figure was roused to vehement indignation; they remonstrated with the procurator, nor would they listen to his excuse that the Romans had their customs as well as the Jews, and that the removal of the emperor’s portrait from his ensigns by an officer of his own might be regarded as a crime against the imperial majesty. But if Tiberius was merely the creature of the delators in his own capital, in the provinces he retained his good sense and independence. Perhaps it was by a special authorisation from him that Pilate consented to withdraw the obnoxious images. Nevertheless, the Jews, under the guidance of their priests, continued to watch every act of his administration with inveterate jealousy, and when he ventured to apply a portion of the temple revenues to the construction of an aqueduct for the supply of their city, broke out into violence which provoked him to severe measures of repression.
It is probable that mutual exasperation led to further riots, followed by sanguinary punishments; the government of Pilate was charged with cruelty and exaction, and at last the provincials addressed themselves to Vitellius, the governor of Syria. Nor were their expectations disappointed. The proconsul required his procurator to quit the province, and submit himself to the pleasure of the offended emperor. Tiberius, indeed, was already dead before his arrival, but his successor attended without delay to the representations of his lieutenant, and Pilate was dismissed with ignominy to Vienna. From the confidence with which Tiberius was appealed to on a matter of such remote concern, it would seem that the vigilance of his control was not generally relaxed even in the last moments of his life.
While Judea and Samaria were thus annexed to the Roman province, Galilee and the outlying regions of Peræa and Ituræa were still suffered to remain under their native rulers; and the dominions of the great Herod became once more united transiently under a single sceptre at no distant period. If, however, we consider the condition of the Jewish provincials under the Roman fasces, we shall find reason to believe that it was far from intolerable, and presented probably a change for the better from the tyranny of their own regal dynasties.