The Reach of Rome: A History Of The Roman Imperial Frontier 1St-5th Centuries Ad

CHAPTER 1

Augustus: The Advice

ROME WAS ALREADY seven centuries old at the dissolution of the Republic and her empire substantially in place when her first emperor took the purple. In step with long and glorious achievements both in war and diplomacy, there had grown assumptions of Rome’s omnipotence and eternity, coupled with the belief that her outward march had no limits save those which ocean, unprofitable climate and terrain might impose. Despite the calamity of the civil wars, which had brought Augustus to the throne, confidence towards the outside world remained unshaken. Ideas of appeasement, or of passivity as a principle of statecraft, ran counter to Rome’s experience and were alien to her thinking. The corollary – a defended frontier – was equally unthinkable. Frontiers were needed to hold ground and keep the peace, but they were seen as temporary, as pausing places, or as startlines for future advance. Frontiers in the sense of stoplines, fixed and final, guarded and fortified, were as yet unfamiliar to Romans. Nor, till expansion faltered, would they begin to form.

The very nature of the Republic had made it unlikely that Rome’s borderlands would be placed under permanent military control, simply because the principle of permanence was not applied to military matters. The Senate, the Republic’s ruling body, was an aristocratic assembly, based on power-sharing, but haunted by the fear that some of its members might use the military machine to seize more than their fair share. This meant that there would be no such thing as professional generals or standing armies. Senators were entrusted with commands for strictly defined objectives and armies raised for single campaigns. Units would be retained to guard new conquests only if a specific danger threatened and only for as long as danger lasted. The non-existence of permanent armed forces told against fixed frontiers in a practical sense as surely as Rome’s history of glorious expansion denied them psychologically.

This expansion had been fitful. Frontiers were where the last campaign ended. Any given moment might reveal provinces half won and lands in limbo, while the army which captured them was disbanded, its officers’ commissions terminated and attention turned to other theatres. Meanwhile, de facto boundaries were secured by treaties with the new neighbours, cemented by the installation of pro-Roman chieftains, bribery, the awarding of commercial privileges, the creation of evacuated zones, the dismantling of fortifications and similar devices. Friendly tribes might retain their weapons and be paid to watch those that were unfriendly. Behind all such measures was the threat of reprisal, and a stern reputation to back it.

Along the Asian borders were a number of small states known as ‘friends of the Roman people’.¹ The rapid campaigns and sweeping settlements of Pompey had disposed of Alexander the Great’s near-eastern territories, annexing Syria as a Roman province and leaving much of the remainder under Rome’s protection, though still in the hands of local rulers. This screen of dependencies across Armenia and what is now eastern Turkey, with outliers to the south, formed a buffer between Rome and her rival Parthia (Iran). With occasional assistance these allies could look after the frontier in their own areas, providing a solution of sorts for the empire’s eastern flank. It was nevertheless a temporary solution. The caretaker kingdoms were not strong and sometimes not even staunch. In due course they would be absorbed into the Roman empire. Meanwhile, with Parthia presently quiescent, imperial attention could focus on the European theatres; and it is to them we must look for the frontier’s inception.

So, by 27 BC, the year of Augustus’ accession, Rome had formed the habit of expansion, but had not yet reached geographical limits which might modify that habit. His reign would be crucial to the frontier idea, for during it Rome encountered these limits and the influences which guided her towards perimeter defence were first felt. The origin of the frontier in its full and formal sense thus coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the empire, though the emergence of actual boundary works still lay some decades ahead.

The civil wars had ended on a dangerous note. On the winning side alone sixty legions stood combat-ready: a factor which compelled an urgent and radical review of the army’s future. Augustus decided to retain twenty-eight, while the remainder would be demobilised and settled in colonies. By this act the West’s first professional standing army, consisting of 150,000 legionaries and a similar number of auxiliaries, was created. Length of service was set at sixteen years, later increased to twenty.

However, a standing army did not mean that formal, garrisoned frontiers must follow. On the contrary, an empire protected along its edges, rather than by armies held in the interior was unprecedented. Nor was there some strategic reason, peculiar to early imperial Rome, why precedent should now be broken. The pointer to the future lay not just in the new army’s formation but in its deployment, which was politically influenced. The historian Dio Cassius of Nicaea, writing in the 3rd century, tells us of Augustus that ‘Before the least sign of trouble he made haste to discharge some of the soldiers and to scatter most of the others.’²

In this last phrase lay far-reaching consequences. ‘Scattering the soldiers’ meant confining the army to the outer provinces, with all legions posted as far as possible both from Rome and (in as much as the strategic situation allowed) from each other. Though Augustus had no notion of its outcome, the seeds of a frontier army were already being sown. Should a durable type of frontier now evolve, the existence of a standing army, stationed round the empire’s edge, ensured that there would be the permanent means to guard it. This would in turn shape the frontier’s character, distinguishing it from prehistoric dykes and ditchworks, which were unmanned and fulfilled a delineational rather than a truly defensive role. The new demobilisation terms reinforced these tendencies. Veteran colonies would be predominantly in the outer provinces where land was more readily available. In effect this created a frontier reserve, made resolute by men protecting their own homes.

We need not look far to explain the army’s dispersal. It expressed Augustus’ distrust of soldiers and of ambitious men who might suborn them. By keeping the legions close to the borders their energies could be directed toward foreign enemies; and keeping them far from each other would ensure that no overwhelming force could be assembled which might threaten the throne. While caution was understandable in the aftermath of civil war, Augustus’ arrangements would long outlive him. In this matter of deployment, all the early and many of the late emperors would follow his lead; not in deference to Augustus’ memory, but because they shared his fears. It says little for Rome’s constitutional development that centuries were to pass without resolution of the principate’s most basic problems: uncertainty regarding control of the army and absence of a universally accepted formula for succession to the throne. Fear of usurpation would dominate imperial thinking till the end and ensure that this early decision to scatter the army, based on suspicion rather than strategy, established the norm. The forces remained dispersed for at least two hundred years. There was no home army, no Italian command or centrally based reserve. Frontiers were reinforced only by borrowing from other frontiers, campaigns made possible only by weakening frontier garrisons. If seriously challenged, Rome would be unable to respond with the authority of a unified force. Fortunately, the need to cope with major incursions was still far distant.

Augustus’ disposition of the legions was matched by his manipulation of the provinces: ‘Of these he retained the most powerful on the grounds that they were insecure, either with enemies on their borders or themselves capable of rebellion. But his real purpose was that he alone should have arms and maintain soldiers.’³ In short Augustus kept the outer, returning the inner provinces to the Senate. It was, as Dio states, a muted way of making himself commander-in-chief, for the army would be stationed only in the outer provinces which would be governed and administered by the emperor’s appointees. At the same time it established his hold over foreign affairs and decisions of peace or war. Finally it meant that the future frontier would be under direct, imperial authority. This is a factor of some importance for the shape of our story. Unfashionable as it may be to reckon history in terms of kings or caesars, ours must especially emphasise Rome’s rulers, for military and frontier responsibility was exclusively theirs. In Tacitus’ words: ‘Since Augustus so arranged it, the emperors alone earned the blame and praise for Rome’s distant wars.’⁴

The division of territory into what Dio called the ‘Senate’s share’ and ‘Caesar’s share’ was accompanied by a ban on senators even visiting a frontier province without imperial permission: a clear indication that Augustus considered dissident senators and mutinous soldiers as the likeliest ingredients of conspiracy. To this we must add the rider that the Senate, with its centuries of experience, remained indispensable; and the emperors continued to rely on it for their senior officials, including provincial governors and legionary commanders. More broadly, partition of the provinces begins a divergence between inner and outer, in which the majority of Roman subjects become unfamiliar with the frontiers, unused to the sight of soldiers, incapable of self-protection and dependent for their safety on the remoter provincials.

In contrast with his revolutionary reforms of army and state, Augustus’ view of the world – and of Roman claims to it – appears traditional. Evidence may be produced for his admiration of Alexander the Great, as well as for ‘all who had uplifted Rome from her modest past to her glorious present’.⁵ It can be deduced from Augustan literature that unlimited dominion was seen as a destiny decreed by heaven; or that the world was Rome’s birthright, of which the empire was merely the part she found convenient to occupy.⁶ But it will suffice to consider the facts of the reign: Egypt annexed, the Spanish conquest concluded, the Alpine lands and Balkans taken in hand: in short more territory acquired than by any other individual in Rome’s history. Nor is there evidence that Augustus was seeking limits to the imperium. Though his armies had brought the Danube within reach, there was apparently no hurry to invest it as a frontier. On the contrary, his goals lay in yet more heroic projects, in still more aggressive and fluid warfare.

Next would be the conquest of Germany, initially to the Elbe. It was led by the emperor’s stepsons: Drusus, who died on campaign, and then Tiberius. Sixteen years’ struggle in mire and forest, amphibious landings and spectacular marches were rewarded with a succession of victories. A bold project, sometimes called the Bohemian Plan, was mooted as a culminating blow. Tiberius would cross the Danube heading north, snip off what is now the western end of the Czech Republic, descend into the German plain and join hands with an army group advancing eastwards from the Rhine. We may guess this would have brought the empire to a line through modern Vienna–Prague–Dresden–Magdeburg–Hamburg that would have been straighter and shorter than the Rhine–Danube axis. But nothing requires the assumption of either as a prospective frontier. The so-called Bohemian Plan may have been only one step in a larger offensive.

None would be implemented. Shortly before commencement of operations, a revolt erupted in Tiberius’ rear and spread rapidly across the Balkans. To quell it required over half Rome’s fighting strength, which became tied up for three years in a dangerous, mountain war. Meanwhile it seemed to Augustus that northern Germany, west of the Elbe, was sufficiently pacified to allow its organisation in legal and fiscal terms. The governor entrusted with this task was from the fringe of the imperial family: P. Quintillius Varus, jurist and administrator, experienced only in the mature provinces and a military novice. But Germany was unready for civilian rule, with its infrastructure of roads and forts incomplete and the army disinclined to winter far inside the conquered territory. Accordingly, in AD 9, at the end of his first summer in the new province, Varus and his party turned back toward the Rhine. The column consisted of three legions and auxiliaries with families, servants and a lengthy baggagetrain. Poor intelligence and gullible leadership allowed it to be inveigled from its course. The large contingent of German auxiliaries then deserted. Varus struggled on through drenching rain. The German soldiers, augmented by all who could be mustered from the surrounding tribes, returned to ambush the column. In a three-day running fight the legions were eroded and the entire company annihilated at a location now believed to be ten miles northwest of Osnabrück. Varus and his staff chose suicide. Romans called it the Varian Disaster, also known as the battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

This calamity, closely following the Illyrican revolt, deeply disheartened the ageing Augustus. It carried the warning that there were two sorts of provincial: those already accustomed to taxes and laws, like the Greeks and Egyptians; and those recently wild and free, like the Illyricans and Germans. What is more, there were two kinds of land and two sorts of warfare. The developed state, with its roads, cities, organised army and central government had been captured relatively easily. The attacker could use the roads and strike towards the heart. The defender had no choice but to accept the sort of set-piece encounter at which Rome excelled. But what of trackless, townless countries, where authority was nebulous and the enemy dispersed and concealed? One recalls 146 BC, the astonishing year in which Rome encompassed the destruction of Carthage and Corinth and two empires tumbled ready-made into her lap. Such days were gone. Though Germany promised an agriculture comparable to Gaul’s and a recruiting ground second to none, hostility was implacable and the developmental problems daunting.

The old emperor lived five years with the remorse of the Varian Disaster. In the summer of AD 14, after eating figs from his own garden fed to him by the empress Livia, his condition worsened; and the amici (counsellors) and other notables were summoned:

Sending for his colleagues he gave them his instructions, finally adding, ‘I found Rome brick, I leave it marble’: meaning not merely the state of its buildings, but of the empire generally. Then, mockingly, he asked for a round of applause (as may be given to a comic actor at the conclusion of some mime): so ridiculing most tellingly the puny span of man.⁷

Thus he died on 19 August, by which month posterity remembers him. The death was concealed until Tiberius could be brought back from a visit to Dalmatia. On returning, he requested that documents be read to the Senate. These consisted of three notebooks, ‘all written by Augustus in his own hand’.⁸ The first contained instructions for the funeral. The second recorded all he had accomplished. ‘The third was a statement of national resources, including the armed forces, the taxes to be levied and so on.’

This third part suggests the crudity of the imperial machine as well as its secretiveness, hinting as it does that the vital facts of empire were known only to the emperor and perhaps carried about his person. Be that as it may, there was a twist in the tail, for the final sentence contained Augustus’ last admonition to his successors. Tacitus, with characteristic compression, puts this into five famous words: consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii (advice that the empire should be kept within its existing boundaries). Dio enlarges: ‘His advice was that we should be content with what we now possessed. Under no circumstances should we seek to expand the empire. It would be difficult to defend and we might lose what we already had.’⁹ This was an astonishing turnabout and a comment of immeasurable importance for the future frontier. The imperialist had recanted. After a reign which had cut broad swaths into the barbaricum,¹⁰ the inference was that such things might never be seen again. For five stirring centuries Rome had taught her children that legions marched. Now the emperor’s parting words were that they should sit. It was hardly an inspirational codicil to the Augustan age.

Augustus’ advice put Tiberius in a quandary. On the one hand he saw his stepfather’s dying wish as sacrosanct, or at least found it convenient to say so. For he too was older and wiser. Few knew better that Germany meant ‘more forests, deeper swamps and an ever-savage enemy’.¹¹ On the other hand the Varian Disaster had left Rome baying for blood. A war of revenge had in fact been unleashed in Augustus’ last year, and was now unstoppable. In command was Germanicus, Drusus’ son, spurred by the wish to vindicate his father and restore Rome’s honour. He too would spend three years in Germany. Writing to Tiberius he expressed the belief that given one more summer he could end resistance for ever. But Tiberius was tiring. The German war had gone on for twenty-eight years and was clearly repeating itself. Though Romans were defeating Germans, Rome was not defeating Germany. Tiberius was fond of saying that the deified Augustus had sent him nine times into Germania,¹² which added up to at least six years’ field experience. During that time he must have come to realise how open-ended the task was, must have known that fresh tribes were still trickling down from the inexhaustible reservoir of the north,¹³ and seen how the simultaneous effort on the Rhine and in the Balkans had exhausted the army; how even Roman shoulders lacked strength to carry the undeveloped world of central and eastern Europe.

As for Germanicus, he would have to make do with a Triumph, a coin issue, the consulate and a governorship in the East. As for the Germans: ‘they could be left to their own, internal struggles’.¹⁴ As for public opinion and the dream of endless empire: Tiberius replied with the tired comment, ‘there have been successes enough already’.¹⁵

The subject of Germania was dropped. No one spoke of abandoning claims. No one announced the war’s conclusion. Germanicus was simply recalled and not replaced. The army wintered on the Rhine but did not recross in the spring. Instead of patriotic fervour, silence now settled over the German front. Yet this was a meaningful silence, and from it the Roman imperial frontier imperceptibly grew. Imperceptibly, because the armistice was still being played to the public as a lull in attack rather than a commitment to defence. For the army too the adjustment would be gradual. All in all it is not surprising that the organisation of the Rhine’s left bank into an efficient, tightly guarded frontier spread over fifty years. The Danubian armies followed suit. Tents were stowed and substantial buildings slowly replaced them as the norm of military life. Fort ramparts and turreted gates rose and villages sprouted outside them. Out of the security which is the soldier’s gift to the civilian and the enterprise which is the civilian’s gift to the soldier, towns will grow and small economic miracles will