The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Apart from a reference to a census,⁵⁸ only a few anecdotes survive about Gaul in Nero's reign. A statue of Mercury was built among the Arverni and there was a fire in Lyons in a.d. 65.

Some general observations emerge from this brief survey. For most of the period, the major events centred on the north east where tens of thousands of troops were stationed, an equivalent population, in ancient terms, to that of a number of cities. The troops acted as a huge economic magnet but also a political magnet in so far as emperors and members of the imperial household visited the area frequently. The other region affected by military activities at this period was Aquitaine, in the narrow sense of the area south of the Garonne. Agrippa's road system, decided on very early but constructed over a long period of time, accorded importance to both the north east and the south west. Finally, regardless of misinterpretations of the events of a.d. 21, the strong links established by Caesar between the 'Julian' aristocracies and the imperial power showed no signs of weakening.

2. Innovation and inertia

Attempts to assess the impact of the conquest and of the imposition of new structures on Gaul run up against a major problem. On none of the sites that were to develop into Gallo-Roman towns, are there any archaeological levels datable to the period between the end of the Gallic Wars and about 20 B.C., or even later. The most striking examples are the three colonies founded by Caesar and Plancus. At Nyon, the colonia lulia Equestris, nothing has been found dating from before 15 b.c., at Augst, Augusta Raurica, the earliest levels date from the end of the reign of Augustus and at Lyons the first traces apart from defensive ditches, perhaps those of Plancus' camp, date from between 30 and 20 B.C. Dendrochronology has dated the first encampment at Petrisberg in Trier to 30 b.c., but there is no contemporary material. The few exceptions are often ambiguous. There have been a few sporadic finds at Reims, where two ditched and banked enclosures have been found, remains of settlement are known from Metz, thousands of Gallic coins have been found at Langres and the excavations of 'ma Maison' at Saintes in the south west, have produced some sherds of 40—30 B.C.

Should we conclude that the first towns took their time to appear? In fact, the argument ex silentio should be distrusted for two reasons. The first reason is that urban archaeology is a relatively recent innovation in France. The second is that, when it comes to these early periods, the stratigraphic frame of reference depends on finds from Roman military camps, and the earliest camps to have been excavated date from after 19 в.с. Neuss is dated after 19 B.C., Dangstetten from 15 to 9 B.C., Rodgen between 12 and 9 b.c., Oberaden between 11 and 9 b.c., Haltern from 7 b.c. to a.d. 9 and so on. The result is that archaeologists are often unable to date material that is after 50 b.c. but before 20 b.c., especially if the material does not consist of imported pottery. It is quite likely, then, that research will advance rapidly in this area, but for the moment it is only possible to stress the slowness of developments.

The birth of urbanism can only be traced from the Augustan period, and then only from the end of his., reign, since almost every town site produces sherds of Arretine ware and then of early Gaulish terra sigillata. It is important to distinguish several categories among these sites. For a start we must set to one side the cases of Lyons and of Autun. Lyons grew enormously from 20 B.C. onwards. Although it was doubtless unfortified, the hilltop of Fourviere was covered with settlement, a theatre was built there with stone imported from quarries in the south, in particular from Glanum, and there was probably a forum too. Craft workshops developed on and around the hilltop, and branches of the great pottery manufacturers of Arezzo, Pisa and the north of Italy, were set up there to supply the Roman military camps. From the Augustan period they even imitated amphorae of Dressel2-4 type and several other varieties. Lyons became a distribution centre for Mediterranean pro­ducts including wine, olive oil and fish preserves en route to Switzerland, the Moselle valley and the Rhineland, not to mention central and western Gaul. After the federal sanctuary was set up at Condate in 12 B.C., euergetism increased and more and more monuments were built, like the amphitheatre, given by aristocrats from Saintes in a.d. 19. Lyons became a political, religious and economic metropolis adorned with a striking array of monuments. The first houses were built of wooden panels, had several rooms, floors made 'en terrazzo' and wall-paintings inspired directly by Roman fashions.

The case of Autun is rather different. The late Iron Age capital of the Aedui had been Bibracte, mentioned several times by Caesar who had stayed there. It was located on the summit of Mont Beuvray, some 20 km from Autun. Excavations in the nineteenth century, which have recently been resumed, uncovered public zones, a wide variety of private housing, including some huge houses of Roman design, and artisan quarters, all surrounded with a massive rampart. The whole town was moved to Autun, and the population transfer must have been fairly rapid as the finds from Bibracte hardly go beyond the turn of the millennium. The name Augustodunum expresses Augustus' desire to bestow his personal favour on Rome's oldest allies. Plenty of other evidence shows his favour in action: Autun was surrounded by the only circuit wall built in the Three Gauls in this period, crowned with towers and adorned with four ornamental gates, enclosing an area of some 200 hectares. Autun was also the home of the famous 'universities' for young aristocrats from

all over Gaul, and of the school for gladiators. Built from scratch with a regular orthogonal street plan from the first, Autun was the showpiece city. The city drew its livelihood from the elite who lived within its walls, but drew their wealth from the land. Craftsmen were attracted by the city's position at a natural crossroads, and Autun probably had great religious prestige, as the sacred quarter based around the temple of Janus shows. But the town never really took much part in the great commercial movements which were the lifeblood of Macon and Chalon. The early prominence of the city derived from a desire for an urban lifestyle, based on the integration of the elite and on practical assistance from the Roman authorides, perhaps in the form of tax exemptions or gifts.

Other towns in Gaul had very different experiences. In Switzerland, orthogonal grids were laid out at the very start, and filled in little by little by buildings constructed of wood and earth. Spaces were reserved for public use, but monuments were rare: Augst was partly enclosed by a circuit wall and had a theatre and Nyon had a building of basilica-type. It is possible that the colonial status of Augst and Nyon exerted an influence on other centres like Avenches.

The road network must also have played a part. For some time now, excavations in the towns on the main route to the south west have been revealing Augustan layers and Augustan street grids. These are towns like Limoges and Clermont-Ferrand, the Roman names of which alone suggest an early origin.⁵⁹ Recent discoveries at Feurs, Roman Forum Segusiavorum, support this picture, revealing an Augustan street plan, a forum dated to around a.d. 10—20 and an inscription attesting a wooden theatre.⁶⁰ So although the unrest in Aquitaine had been settled fairly early on, the route to the south west continued to promote urbanism.

The same applied in the north east and the east. Langres, Metz, Trier and Amiens all grew up at key points on the road system. So too did less important centres like Bavai, or nearby sites like Paris. When the road junctions were also on navigable rivers, towns developed even earlier and became even more important. For example, Amiens had a town grid based on the pes drusianus, and its wattle and daub buildings covered an area of 40 hectares. Trier, Metz and Reims were probably broadly similar. Craft activity is well attested but no sign of public monuments.

Almost everywhere else is it difficult to reconstruct the earliest stages of town life. The best known of the towns of the south west is Saintes, Mediolanum Santonum. The town is famous for the family of Iulii descended from the Gaul Epotsoviridus, whose great-grandson C. Iulius Rufus built the amphitheatre of the Three Gauls at Condate, and in a.d. 18 or 19 put up the arch of Germanicus in his own city. But the Augustan town itself is haphazardly laid out, with tiny winding streets and both houses and workshops built of wattle and daub and only 20 to 30 square metres in size.

At Bordeaux, the late Iron Age 'emporium' covered an area of at most

A number of Gallic towns had names beginning in Augusto-, for example, Autun, Clermont, Limoges, Troyes, Bayeux and Senlis; in Caesaro-, for example,Tours and Beauvais; or in Iulio-, for example, Lillebonne and Angers. In other cases the element Augusta was followed by the name of the people, as in the cases of Trier, Saint-Quentin, Soissons and Auch. The names might have been granted as a favour at any point during the Julio-Claudian period.

CIL xm 1642. A civic benefactor, of the reign of Claudius, announces that he has rebuilt in stone a wooden theatre.

5 or 6 hectares on a promontory surrounded by soft ground on the banks of the Garonne. The Roman conquest had no impact on the site until the beginning of the Christian era. At the end of Augustus' reign and the beginning of Tiberius' the city expanded outwards to cover some i г to 15 hectares, and the first traces of regular town-planning and Roman building techniques appeared, but the main period of expansion did not start until the middle of the first century. Much the same sort of sequence could be described for a number of towns, from Poitiers and Perigueux to Avenches and Trier. As for Brittany, Normandy and the Loire valley, all that can be said is that the remains are very slight.

To put it another way, perhaps we should imagine many of the civitas capitals of the Three Gauls as sparsely populated centres, only roughly planned out, with a few clusters of public buildings, maybe wooden ones at that, a little trade going on, a few craftsmen and houses built in much the same way as in the late Iron Age.

Epigraphy and architectural elements can be used to elaborate the picture a little, although there again the evidence concentrates in Switzerland, in the north east and in the south west. At Langres, a text refers to a temple of Augustus vowed by Drusus in 9 в.с. The Princes of the Youth received epigraphic or monumental honours in Lyons, Sens, Trier and Reims, where there was a cenotaph. In 4 в.с. Bavai, Bagacum, acclaimed the adventus of Tiberius. The columns and capitals found at Saintes and Perigueux follow Roman models from the end of the last century B.C., and in Switzerland sculpture was made and imported from the reign of Augustus. It is worth bearing in mind that many buildings, including basilicas, theatres and amphitheatres, may well have been built in wood, on the lines of those we know of from the military camps, and so would have left no trace. All the same, with the odd exception, the Three Gauls had not produced a thick crop of towns in the Augustan period. The contrast with the situation in Narbonensis is striking.

The forty years between the accession of Tiberius and the death of Claudius corresponded, in most of the towns discussed above, to a period of growth and monumentalizadon. The street plans were systematized and in many places, especially in Switzerland, masonry began to be used. The first trunk roads were built, like that linking Saintes, Poitiers and possibly Paris. Amphitheatres were built at Saintes, perhaps at Senlis as well, and in Perigueux, where it took the family of the Auli Pompeii, whose first member was called Dumnotus, three generations to complete the task. Public baths were constructed, aqueducts were built as at Bordeaux, and houses were bigger and decorated with wall-paintings based on the Pompeian Third Style. At Lyons, excavations at the site of le Verbe Incarne show that the plateau of la Sarra was levelled to allow the building of a temple, surrounded with porticoes resting on cryptoporticoes, and dedicated to the imperial family. Also at Lyons, a monumental fountain, supplied with water by a new aqueduct, was dedicated to Claudius and a major programme of reclamation made the tongue of land between the Rhone and the Saone habitable and suitable for a trading district.

New towns appeared and others expanded to become real urban centres most of all as a result of greatly improved communications, affecting many regions but especially the west. Claudius' reign witnessed large scale road building projects, especially in the Loire valley, but also supplementing road networks in the north, the centre, Brittany, Nor­mandy and elsewhere. The conquest of Britain stimulated development all along the Atlantic strip. This was also the period of the great expansion of Poitiers and Bordeaux, as well as of the growth of Tours, Bourges, Angers, Rennes as well as of many other centres which would not all become quite so successful.

Why was it that urbanization was such a slow and often such a limited process in the Three Gauls? The Celtic oppida do not seem to have been intensively occupied for very long after the conquest, in fact one of the most recent contributions of archaeological research to the debate has been to show the early origins of many of the secondary urban centres which comprised the closely packed network of sites usually termed vici. Some originated when populations moved down from hilltop sites to the neighbouring plains, others developed from indigenous sites of similar scale which were rarely located on hilltops, despite the famous example of Alesia, but many seem to have been created ex nibilo. Apart from those sites that developed around places of pilgrimage, these vici tended to be located on routes, whether terrestrial or riverine, that had been import­ant ever since the Neolithic period, in other words astride those communications channels that had organized local life from time immemorial. Almost everywhere in the Three Gauls these small centres have produced evidence of craft working, often at quite a sophisticated level, including bronze and iron working, carpentry, weaving and pottery production. The small towns had a commercial role, then, sometimes directed towards a military camp, as in the case of the canabae of Mirebeau or Strasbourg or Baden in Switzerland, but more often serving a local catchment area. Early on some of these vici were planned and acquired some public buildings. Vidy, Lousonna, had a street plan from 20—10 в.с. and a building with a basilical plan was constructed there round a.d. 30-40; Alesia and Malain were planned under Augustus and organized properly under Claudius, Alesia acquiring streets, porti­coes with fafades, masonry buildings, temples and a square. Some of these towns were more dynamic than the cities that were the capitals of their civitates-. Orleans, for example, grew much faster than Chartres. The first land divisions discovered by aerial photography show that Three Gauls did not exhibit the same strong links between cities and their suburban and rural villae as characterized Narbonensis. Town and villa relations were much more typically centred on the vici.

Does this mean that, in general, apart from those regions affected by colonization and perhaps by proximity to Narbonensis, the Gallic landscape was structured not so much by the new constraints introduced by Roman rule, but by longer term factors? We need to know more about these long-term structures before that hypothesis can be assessed and the notion of 'tribal survivals' should be shunned. But it does seem likely that the influence of the local territories predominated over the impact of the Roman civitates.

Unifying factors

The Latin right had been granted to all communities in Narbonensis in the Caesarian period, and although some juridical complexities had been introduced by granting some civitates treaties or Roman citizenship as privileges, a general principle had been established. In the Three Gauls, on the other hand, the principle was one of diversity. We can reconstruct from various sources, and in particular from Pliny, the list of states with treaties. It comprises the Helvetii, the Carnutes, the Remi, the Aedui and the Lingones. But it is much less clear which cities were free, (liberae) and which exempt from taxation (immunes), and the epigraphic evidence does not always agree with the literary sources.[648] Strabo states that Rome had granted the Latin right to some Aquitanian peoples, 'in particular the Ausci and the Convenae'.[649] This may have been on the occasion of the Pyrenean campaigns or possibly it was because the Convenae had once been included in Gallia Transalpina. Other civitates were granted the Latin right,[650] but we do not know when it became widespread. Any period from the reign of Claudius to the Flavians is possible, but there is no means of deciding for sure.

An almost complete absence of epigraphy makes it very difficult to trace the development of governmental institutions within the civitates with any confidence. A vergobret (magistrate) is mentioned on the coinage of the Lexovii, whose capital was Lisieux in Normandy, and an inscription from Saintes reads 'C. Iulius Marinus, son of C. Iulius Ricoveringus, of the Voltinian tribe, first \flameri\ of Augustus, curator of Roman citizens, quaestor, vergo[bret]' .^M The early date of this inscription fits in with a graffito found at Saint-Marcel, Indre, ancient Argentomagus, which reads 'the vergobret has performed the sacrifice (vercobretos readdas)' and which dates to around a.d. 20—30. The Gallic office of vergobret may have corresponded to the post of praetor, known from Claudian Bordeaux.⁶⁵ But the name of the office, whether indige­nous or Romanized, is much less significant than the fact that it refers to an individual, rather than a collegiate, magistracy. The data are so rare that no firm conclusions can be drawn from them. All the same Saintes and Bordeaux were among the most urbanized states of the Three Gauls. The pride with which the powerful recalled their ancestors is also very striking. Also from Saintes was C. Iulius Rufus who proclaimed his descent from C. Iulius Otuaneunus, the son of C. Iulius Gedomo, the son of Epotsoviridus.⁶⁶ The impression created by the sources, then, is that, outside the colonies, late Iron Age institutions survived under the cover of vague Roman terminology, and that the great families of the Julian aristocracy preserved their superordinate power vis-a-vis their fellow citizens.

As we have already seen, Roman citizens from the Three Gauls did not have the right, before the reign of Claudius, to stand for the magistracies in Rome. But they could gain entry to the senatorial order by imperial favour. It is surprising that only three senators are known before a.d. 70, all of them from Aquitaine. The small number of equites is also surprising: we know of only twenty or so examples in the first century a.d., from the Three Gauls and the Germanies together, only a quarter as many as are known from Narbonensis. It is as if the greatest ambition of these magnates was to be elected to the priesthood at the federal sanctuary at Condate, so winning the highest honour in the Three Gauls for themselves and their states.

It is difficult to define the exact role played by the federal sanctuary, and the ceremonies that took place there each year, beginning on 1 August, the date of the fall of Alexandria and the festival of the Genius Augusti. The events included the worship of the emperor and of Rome, competitions, and the opportunity for 'political' representation, through the medium of the concilium, the provincial assembly. All the same, the theory that Celtic traditions had been incorporated into the festival cannot be rejected out of hand. Occasional accounts of the site suggest that a sacred grove and a crowd of statues stood alongside the altar and the amphitheatre, and the organization of the concilium is also peculiar to Gaul, the chief official being a sacerdos, rather than a flamen, the other officers being a iudex, an allectus arcae Galliarum and an inquisitor Galliarum. The gathering was not an exact copy of the famous Druidical meetings mentioned by Caesar, but it may have been some sort of

« CIL xiii 590, 596-600. ⁴⁶ CILxiii 1036.

ij d. gaul

transmutation of them. The place was different, as were the forms of the meeting, but important business was transacted there and it was the occasion for equals to recognize each others' paramount prestige. The creation of the Ara Ubiorum for the Germans living west of the Rhine, and of a conventus at Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (Lugdunum Conve- narum) for Aquitanians south of Garonne, also at an early date, showed the Romans' willingness and perhaps their need, to perpetuate tra­ditional annual festivities. Unfortunately there are too few inscriptions from either the Confluence or the Gallic states to say for certain where the sacerdotes came from, although we know that the first, elected in 12 b.C., was the Aeduan Iulius Vercondaridubnus, and that in the early first century his successors included the Cadurcan M. Lucterius Sencianus, probably a descendant of the chief Lucterus who had fought against Caesar between 5 2 and 51 B.C., and also C. Iulius Rufus from Saintes. The assembly of the Three Gauls offered Augustus a gold neck-ring, a torque, that weighed 100 pounds, and it was also the assembly, rather than the city of Lyons, who welcomed Caligula, who established a contest in Greek and Latin rhetoric there.⁶⁷ The concilium demanded of the elite that they demonstrated their loyalty to the emperor and their acceptance of Latin culture and that they indulged in extravagant euergetism, but most of all it was the premier stage on which aristocrats paraded their wealth, their prestige and their rivalries. The return of a new sacerdos to his home state must have been the occasion for triumphal honours, and more than one wanted to reproduce, on a smaller scale, the entertainments he had given, and over which he had just presided.

It is necessary to return, once more, to the scarcity of inscriptions. The usual explanation given is that it represents resistance to the Latin language, although it may be more a sign of psychological difficulties surrounding the use of writing, perhaps deriving from the circumstance that in the late Iron Age the Druids had monopolized writing and it had therefore never been publicly displayed. On the other hand, Gauls made a major contribution to the Roman army. Before a.d. 68 they provided twenty-eight cavalry divisions and seventy-six cohorts, that is to say about 65 per cent of the auxiliary strength of the western provinces. Many also served as legionaries: 25 per cent of the inscriptions found in Gaul, including Narbonensis, from the reigns of Claudius and Nero, are those of legionaries. The return of substantial numbers of men who had served for years in the Roman army must have had all sorts of consequences for both the language and more generally the 'civilization' of the Three Gauls.

Assimiladon had begun, albeit slowly, not only among the elite but also among other groups lower down the social scale. The process is

5<эо

⁶⁷ Sue. Calig. 20.

often described as being accompanied by extensive economic and commercial integration, but this is unlikely to have been the case. Recent numismatic studies have shown a shortage of coin that seems to have grown progressively more severe until the Flavian period. Local coinages were accepted at least until the end of the last century B.C., and after that forgeries multiplied and the countermarks designed to author­ize money as official were themselves being forged under Claudius and Nero. The implications are that central government was not concerned to create an integrated monetary system, nor any real kind of economic organization. As a result laissez-faire predominated, allowing the frontier regions, where soldiers were paid in cash, to exercise a powerful attractive force, and permitting the development of profitable barter with neighbouring 'barbarians', the basis of the economy of ports like Bordeaux and perhaps Reze near Nantes, and of the great centres of distribution, above all Lyons. Apart from in some cities with special advantages, then, commerce was not a major force in creating a new mix of Gauls and Italians. The activities of the elite and the army were much more important.

Mortuary studies show that cremation was widely used, but also reveal a number of local peculiarities. Around Lyons, Briord and Roanne inhumation was none the less important, and it is virtually the only rite used in some cemeteries along the Seine between Paris and Rouen, and especially in Paris itself. By contrast, the inhumations found in the centre-west of France, in Poitou and Saintonge, are those of'high status' women, buried either in stone sarcophagi or in huge wooden coffins. These tombs are very rich in grave-goods. In the same way, the isolated tombs of the Berry, that date to the period between Augustus and Claudius, contain either inhumations or cremations but also very rich assemblages of amphorae, ceramic table services, tools, weapons and bronze objects including wine pourers, bowls, plates and simpula. The same applies to the territory of the Treviri, while in present-day Belgium, tumuli have been recorded. The aristocracy had evidently not unanimously adopted Roman customs, and alongside those nobles who had mausolea built for them at a very early date, like the example from Faverolles in the civitas of the Lingones, there were others who preferred to preserve older traditions.

I will not deal with religion here except briefly to summarize the argument I will develop at greater length in САН xi. The slender evidence we have suggests two main lines of inquiry. First, although the literary evidence tends to focus on the banning and then the suppression of Druidism, recent excavations are turning up more and more temples with concentric plans, temples of the type called fana, constructed on the sites of pre-Roman shrines. Second, Romanized religious monuments like the Boatmen's Pillar put up by the Parisii at Lutecia, juxtapose not only indigenous deities and Roman gods, but also tend to include some reference to the emperor. The epithet Augustus appears very frequently on religious inscriptions, either applied to the god, or associated with him. This is the clearest indication that the Roman emperor descended from Caesar was seen in the Three Gauls as a charismatic leader, who safeguarded peace and unity but also protected the autonomy of those peoples, even the smallest communities, who worshipped him alongside their own local gods in order to make him more truly their own.

Compared with other areas incorporated into the Roman empire, the Tres Galliae stick out like a sore thumb. The Gauls were marked out as different by their climate, by memories of ancient Gallic invasions and of Caesar's war, by their closeness to the Germans, and by their image as barbarians, possessed of great riches, but indulging in human sacrifice. Archaeology makes clear just how much rhetoric there was in Claudius' speech to the Senate, better preserved in CIL xiii 1668 than in Tacitus' rendition. Compared to Narbonensis, so quickly assimilated, the Tres Galliae seem like a world still resting on Iron Age foundations. Cities were slow to establish themselves, the aristocracies were reluctant to go beyond their territorial power bases, and the locality exercised a determining influence over all spheres of life. But the yeast was already at work. Gaul now opened onto the outside world, first the Germanies and then Britain, Gauls were serving in the Roman army, and civilization, spreading contagiously, was transforming public buildings and private houses alike. The worship of the emperor was more and more closely bound up with the power of the leaders of the state, and of its gods. Claudius, whom Suetonius called 'the Gallic emperor' predicted the future more accurately than he described the present.

CHAPTER 13e BRITAIN 43 B.C. TO A.D. 69

JOHN WACHER

I. PRE-CONQUEST PERIOD

Rome's first formal contact with Britain came with the expeditions of Iulius Caesar in 5 5 and 54 в.с.¹ By then, most of the major late Iron Age migrations from Gaul to Britain had already occurred, although within Britain much political and cultural movement was still to take place. Caesar named only six tribes, among which were the Trinovantes and Cenimagni (Iceni?), with four more unnamed in Kent, and with the implication of a nameless eleventh, probably the Catuvellauni, ruled by the leader of the British opposition, Cassivellaunus. Other tribes which were to play a part in the period between Caesar and Claudius and immediately thereafter were the Brigantes, Corieltavi, Cornovii, Dum- nonii, Atrebates and Dobunni in present-day England and the Silures and Ordovices in Wales. The Atrebates arrived in Britain after the Caesarian episodes, brought over by their king Commius, who, at first an ally of Caesar, later unwisely joined the unsuccessful rebellion of Vercingetorix in Gaul; the Dobunni are usually considered to be an offshoot of the Atrebates.² The Catuvellauni gradually emerged as the most powerful tribe in south-east England, occupying an area roughly equivalent to the kingdom of Cassivellaunus. In addition, the four tribes which inhabited Kent eventually merged to form the single tribe of the Cantiaci. Apart from the tribes mentioned by Caesar and some other literary sources, most of our knowledge of their existence and geogra­phical positions is gained from detailed study of the coinage which they minted.³

Caesar's expeditions, even if they bore no long term success, neverthe­less made Rome more aware of Britain's existence. This is partly to be seen in the greatly increased volume of trade between the island and the Roman empire, now expanded to the Channel. The trade is mentioned by Strabo⁴ and attested archaeologically in the numerous goods found especially on sites in the area north of the lower Thames. Politically and

¹ Caes. BCall. v. ² Allen 1961 (в 504) 75—149.

Allen 1958 (в 505) 97-508. It must be admitted, however that some modern authorities view this list of coin distributions with suspicion, e.g. Collis 1971 (в 317) 71-84.

Strab. I v.). 1-4 (199-201С)

503

Map 8. Britain as far north as the Humber.

militarily, Caesar left unfinished business in Britain, and Augustus three times, in 34, 28 and 27 b.C., planned expeditions; all were called off because of needs elsewhere. Deprived of military conquest, Augustus aimed at the maintenance of a balance of power between the major tribes, at first befriending Tincommius, son of Commius of the Atrebates, so as to balance the waxing strength of the Catuvellauni. But this diplomacy did not prevent the latter from invading and occupying the territory of the Trinovantes, an act which was contrary to the terms of the old Caesarian treaty. It appears to have been quite deliberately timed, c. a.d. 10, when Augustus was more than preoccupied with the aftermath of the Varian disaster in Germany, and it came about through the actions of a man who was to become the most powerful ruler in Britain before the Claudian invasion: Cunobelin. Suetonius gave him the title Britannorum Rex, and he was probably a direct descendant of the great Cassivellaunus.⁵

An alternative theory on his origin sees him, however, as a Trinovan- tian monarch who had gained ascendancy over the Catuvellauni; certainly his capital was at Camulodunum near modern Colchester, in Trinovantian territory.⁶ This view strains the information which we have beyond logical bounds. The Catuvellauni and not the Trinovantes were, by implication in Dio's account of the Claudian invasion,⁷ the prime enemy of Rome. By implication also Cunobelin had been their king. It is extremely unlikely that he would have abandoned his own tribe's name in favour of that of an enemy, whether conquered or not.

Despite the apparently anti-Roman bias of some of Cunobelin's early actions, he seems to have given a temporary stability to the tribal affairs of Britain. In Rome's eyes all was well so long as his deeds were balanced by the friendly presence, south of the Thames, of its allies the Atrebates. Unfortunately, following the death of Commius and the accession of his son, Tincommius, the kingdom was rent by fraternal squabbles, Tin­commius being ousted by Eppillus, and he in turn by Verica. In each case, Augustus recognized the successful claimant, despite the appeal of Tincommius for help towards reinstatement; both Eppillus and Verica seem to have been acknowledged as client kings.

Cunobelin was not averse to allowing even more flourishing trade to grow between his kingdom and the empire, since, with its extension to the sea, he now controlled the lucrative trade routes from the Rhineland and elsewhere. His anti-Roman attitude also seems to have abated sufficiently for him to send embassies to Rome, and he may have been among the British rulers who set up offerings on the Capitol.⁸ But with the death of Augustus and the succession of Tiberius, he resumed in the

^s Suet. Calig. 44. ⁶ Rodwell 1976 (e 553) 265-77. ⁷ Dio lx. 19-22.

⁸ Strab. iv.5.3 (200-1Q.

next fifteen or so years the expansion of his kingdom, adding the rest of Kent and penetrating into the middle and upper Thames valley. Pressure was also applied to the Atrebatic kingdom for the first time and it would appear that its centre at Calleva now became part of the Catuvellaunian domain. Tiberius apparently did not react to this provocation, although it is unlikely that it was carried out without protest to Rome.

Tiberius died in a.d. 37 to be succeeded by Gaius. By then Cunobelin must have been sinking into old age and he was perhaps losing his grip on tribal affairs, a factor which was aggravated by the growth to manhood of his sons. The apparent philo-Roman outlook of one of them, Adminius, may well have led to his expulsion and flight to Gaius to support his reinstatement. Gaius was then in Germany and was persuaded by Adminius that Britain could easily be conquered. Gaius assembled an army at Boulogne in a.d. 40, but a mutiny prevented it from sailing; Gaius thereupon called off the enterprise. But the expulsion of Adminius showed that all was not well among the Catuvellauni, a situation which was made worse by the death of Cunobelin and the division of the kingdom between two other sons Caratacus and Togodumnus.

Ambitious, hot-headed and possibly resentful of Roman influence in Britain, they set out on a policy of unlimited aggression which led, not only to the partial, or even total, absorption of the Dobunni, but also to the overrunning of the Atrebates, forcing their king, Verica, to flee to Rome for help, and finally to the total alienation of Rome. Verica was a client king and Roman ally, so that his expulsion could be interpreted as an insult to Rome, which, if left unavenged, would have called into question a whole area of foreign policy at a time when Rome very much relied on client rulers to maintain peace on or near the frontiers. The situation was, moreover, exacerbated by a demand for Verica's extradi­tion and, when this was refused, by aggressive action being taken against Roman merchants in Britain and possibly even against the coast of Gaul. Verica's expulsion, therefore, served as the polidcal vindication for the direct intervention of Rome in Britain in a.d. 43.

causing many adherents to seek refuge across the Channel. There was also the question of military strategy; if Britain were not invaded, the coast of Gaul would require protection from a hostile force controlling the other side of the Channel. To protect it would mean raising the strength of the army to dangerous levels in the western mainland of the empire and no extra territory would be gained to provide its food. If the same army were placed in Britain it would be safely isolated, with fresh sources of food and other supplies. Whatever the reasons, Claudius decided to invade. A force composed of four legions and auxiliaries, altogether amounting to some 40,000 men, under the command of Aulus Plautius, until then governor of Pannonia, was assembled at Boulogne. That part of the Annals of Tacitus which included the account of the invasion is lost, and for literary evidence we have to rely on the later account of Cassius Dio,⁹ which is neither exhaustive nor entirely clear in its descriptions. The evidence of archaeology helps a little, but is again restricted, pointing definitely to only one landfall at Richborough.¹⁰ Yet Dio stresses that the force was divided into three sections; consequently three possibilities can be envisaged. The whole force could have landed at Richborough in three consecutive waves; but it must be admitted that the fortified beachhead there is not nearly large enough to contain so many men, while no other encampment has yet been found nearby. Secondly, it has been argued that whilst one division landed at Richbor­ough, the other two landed at Dover and Lympne respectively; it should be noted, however, that there is no evidence at all from either site of an early Roman presence. Thirdly, it has been ingeniously argued that one division at least was directed to a landing in the neighbourhood of Chichester, in order to carry out the very necessary reinstatement of Verica as soon as possible in his kingdom.[651] The balance of probability would seem to favour the first hypothesis.

The landing was apparently unopposed. After some slight skirmish­ing inland, in which Togodumnus was probably killed, the first major action against the Britons was at the crossing of the river Medway, where the Roman army was victorious; it then advanced to the Thames. At this stage Caratacus is said to have fled to Wales. After a pause to allow Claudius to arrive on the scene, the advance was resumed and the emperor was able to enter the Catuvellaunian capital in triumph. There then ensued further campaigns which carried the Roman advance to a position marked roughly by a line drawn from the Humber to the Severn, where for a time it ceased. It has been claimed that it was always the intention of Rome to conquer the whole of Britain.¹² If that was so, it is very difficult to explain why, having reached the line established by c.

⁹ See n. 7. ¹⁰ Cunliffe 1968 (e 553) 232-4. ¹¹ Hawkes 1961 (e 545) (see n. 2) 62-7.

¹² e.g. Mann 1974(0 286) 529-31.

iĵe. britain 4j b.c.-a.d. 69

a.d. 47, another twenty-three years elapsed before the major advance into Wales and the north was resumed. The army lacked neither the manpower nor the capability to advance immediately.

It seems more likely, therefore, that the original intention was only to seek a pragmatic solution to the Catuvellaunian problem by conquest and occupation; the line at which the advance stopped did just that. That it also raised a new set of military problems, which in time required their own solutions, cannot have been endrely foreseen in a.d. 43.

The limit of the advance was marked by the construction of a road, the Fosse Way, for lateral communication from Lincoln to Exeter and by the sidng of forts and fortresses along it, to the front and to the rear of it, forming a broad military zone to protect the newly conquered territory. Most of the forts were occupied by auxiliary regiments but some at least contained battle groups consisting of detachments of legiones II Augusta, XIV Gemina, and IX Hispana brigaded with cavalry. The whereabouts of the headquarters fortresses of these legions in the years immediately after the invasion is imperfectly known and still the subject of some speculation. Legio XX Valeria appears to have been left in reserve at Colchester until just before the foundation of the colonia in a.d. 49, after which it too was moved forward to the frontier.

But not all remained peaceful, even after the primary objective had been reached. Caratacus stirred up his new Welsh allies to attack the province in a.d. 47 just as Ostorius Scapula was taking over the governorship from Aulus Plautius. A campaign against Caratacus was preceded by the disarming of tribes within the new province, an act which itself caused trouble and led to a minor revolt among the allied Iceni. Once started, the campaign against the Welsh tribes was inter­rupted by disturbances among the northern Brigantes, whose queen Cartimandua professed a pro-Roman outlook. Indeed Caratacus, after his defeat in Wales, fled in vain to Cartimandua for protection, only to be handed over to Rome.¹³ There followed some years of almost conti­nuous but confused and ill-recorded fighting in Wales and occasionally in Brigantia, the only permanent result of which was the advance of the frontier zone to the Welsh Marches, probably executed by Ostorius. Then in a.d. 60, a much more serious threat faced the province, which nearly resulted in its loss through the rebellion of Boudica, queen of the Iceni, together with the neighbouring Trinovantes.¹⁴

Much has been written about the causes of the rebellion. It is generally accepted that among them were the forcible reduction of the Iceni, following the death of the Roman client king, Prasutagus, and the refusal of Rome to recognize his queen or daughters as successors. The

Tac. Ann. xn.36; see also Hanson and Campbell 1986 (e 544) 73-90.

5<э8

Tac. Ann. xiv. 29-39.

reduction was carried out in a heavy-handed and arrogant way by the provincial procurator, Catus Decianus, which led to the flogging of Boudica and the rape of her daughters. A contributory cause was the requisitioning of Trinovantian land, including their principal religious site, for the territorium of the new colonia at Colchester; another was the probable expense of maintaining the newly introduced imperial cult. It has also been suggested that a rebellion, just at that time, was intended to act as a diversion and to distract the governor, Suetonius Paullinus, from his campaign against the headquarters of druidism on the island of Anglesey;¹⁵ if so, it failed. Be that as it may, in a.d. 60, while Suetonius was campaigning in north Wales with most of the British garrison, the rebellion exploded; Colchester, London and Verulamium were sacked and burnt, and excavations at each site have produced eloquent evidence for the fires. The small force deployed by the procurator in defence of the colonia was useless, as were the resident veterans. Legio IX, advancing against the rebels from Longthorpe, suffered many casualties and had to withdraw in disorder. Suetonius, apprised of the rebellion, hastened from Wales in advance of his main army, and reached London before the rebels, but realized that there was little that could be done to save the town. He fell back to join his advancing army and finally brought the rebels to battle, probably somewhere along the middle section of Wading Street. The rebels were routed and the province saved. The resulting punitive campaign in East Anglia, together with the battle casualties, must have seriously impoverished the Iceni and Trinovantes for at least a generation, leading to a much slower rate of Romanization in later years.

In the ensuing decade, attempts were made to restore the province. A new and more enlightened procurator, Iulius Classicianus, replaced Catus Decianus, who had fled to Gaul at the outbreak of the revolt, while a succession of milder governors ended hostilities and helped to placate the natives. So successful were these measures that the province was deemed sufficiently safe for legio XIV to be withdrawn in 66. Unfortuna­tely, the peace was shattered by the Roman army itself, disillusioned with the resulting period of inactivity. A mutiny led by a legionary com­mander, Roscius Coelius, forced the governor, Trebellius Maximus, to flee the province in 69. But by then affairs of greater moment gripped the whole empire. Nero had committed suicide in 68 and the power struggle which ensued left its mark on Britain. Its new governor, Vettius Bolanus, was a supporter of Vitellius, who was eventually defeated by Vespasian. Moreover, legio XIV which had supported Otho also returned to Britain for a short time, while the remaining legions had supported Vitellius. Vespasian therefore inherited a province of doubt-

¹⁵ Webster 1978 (e 564).

5 io 13«. britain 43 в. е.—a.d. 69

fill loyalty and it was not until the early 70s that he was able to take remedial action.

iii. organization of the province

Once the midland frontier zone had been created, much of the south east seems to have been demilitarized, and by a.d. 49, with the dispatch of legio XX from Colchester to Gloucester, the way was open for the development of the newly constituted province. It embraced two client kingdoms: the resurrected sometime kingdom of Verica, now renamed as the civitas of the Regni, with a new king, Cogidubnus, in west Sussex and Hampshire, and the Iceni in East Anglia.[652] These two kingdoms enabled Rome to make economies in manpower, although they were very different in character and dependability. According to Tacitus, Cogidubnus proved a staunch ally to Rome and led his kingdom steadily towards peaceful Romanization until his death, probably in the Flavian period.[653] Indeed for a short time during the Year of the Four Emperors (a.d. 69) he may have helped to hold the province against a mutinous army and an unreliable governor on behalf of Vespasian. The idea that he was given the status of an imperial legate has now been undermined by a re-reading of the damaged inscription from Chichester[654] which records his name and titles. Certainly, whether legate or not, something significant was happening in his kingdom at that time, for some of what are probably the earliest urban defences in Britain are to be found there. The Iceni appear to have been less ready to accept the benefits of the conquest, and, on being forcibly disarmed by Ostorius Scapula, staged a minor revolt, which was quickly put down; but it was a presage of more serious things to come.

In the remaining area of the south east, through which the Roman army had passed rapidly, it is possible to detect the establishment of three civitates-. units of local administration, formed from the Iron Age tribal territories embraced by the Cantiaci, the Catuvellauni and the Trino­vantes.¹⁹ The latter first appear in history in Caesar's account of Britain, in a somewhat paradoxical way. Although he refers to them as the most powerful tribe in Britain, they are at the same time also depicted as seeking his protection and assistance to repel attacks by their western neighbour, the tribe of Cassivellaunus. There is no further mention of them, not even at the conquest, until they again appear, embroiled in the Boudican rebellion; consequently, it must be assumed that they had re- emerged under Rome as an independent unit of local government after years of Catuvellaunian domination. But it was their territory that was chosen by the Roman administration for the foundation of the first city in Britain, to act as an example of urbanization to the inhabitants of the new province: an act that was to have far-reaching consequences.

iv. urbanization and communications

The foundation of the colonia at Colchester, on the site of the recently evacuated legionary fortress, in a.d. 49, is mentioned by Tacitus as a deliberate act of policy, whereby a reserve of legionary veterans was maintained in the south east in the absence of any worthwhile regular garrison.²⁰ It was also intended to act as a model of urbanization for the native Britons, and incolae — native inhabitants — were included in the population from the first. The earliest houses of the veterans have been shown by excavations to owe much to the legionary structures that had preceded them, although there were significant changes in layout; yet some of the streets of the fortress were perpetuated.²¹ The position of the forum is still not known with certainty although several sites have been proposed; Tacitus mentions a curia. He also refers to a theatre which has now been identified by excavation, but he stresses that there were no fortifications at the time of the Boudican rebellion, which implies that the legionary defences had been dismantled.²² Astride the main road to London on the western boundary, a triumphal arch was constructed, presumably to commemorate the foundation of the colonia and to honour its founder, Claudius. His memory, though, was more than adequately recognized in the construction of the principal building connected with the new city. This was the great temple of Claudius, which was also to be the centre of the imperial cult in Britain.²³ All that remains now is the podium, lying beneath the Norman casde; originally, it stood within a great colonnaded courtyard with an entrance to the south. It is often argued that Colchester was also intended to be the provincial administra­tive capital, a function that was later to fall on London. It should be stressed, however, that there is no evidence to support this suggestion, and in the extremely fluid state of the new province, it is more likely that the 'capital' would tend to be where the governor was; there is nothing to link him specifically with Colchester.

Some other urban centres had their beginnings in the years immedi­ately after the invasion. Canterbury, a recognized Iron Age site, early became the capital of the civitas Cantiacorum, although many of the features originally attributed to its foundation are now thought to be somewhat later, and the main development did not occur until the turn

²⁰ Tac. Ann. xii.32. ²¹ Crummy 1982 (e 332) 125-34. ²² Tac. Ann. xiv.32.

²³ Sen. Apocol. 8.3; see also Fishwick 1972 (e 534) 164-81.

512

ije. britain 43 b.c.-a.d. 69

of the first and second centuries. But the final street plan may owe some of its irregularities to the lines of earlier streets and existing buildings.[655]London was recognized by Tacitus as a flourishing trading centre even before the Boudican rebellion;[656] houses and shops of the first town, burnt in the rebellion, have been uncovered over a wide area, but litde is known of any public buildings. There are indications of an embryonic street system in the area north of the Thames bridge, the possible northern abutment of which has been identified in excavations in Pudding Lane.[657] There is also evidence to show that at least some provincial administrative functions were centred on London, possibly even before the Boudican rebellion, and certainly after it. The procura­tor, Iulius Classicianus, died in office and was buried at London; his ornate, altar-style tombstone was found reused in the later town wall on Tower Hill.[658]

Verulamium, like Canterbury, was also founded on the site of a major Iron Age centre, the probable sometime oppidum of Tasciovanus. It almost certainly served as the administrative centre for the Catuvellauni from its beginning. Arguments, however, still continue over whether, and if so when, municipal status was conferred. The most recent view holds that it was granted under Claudius and at about the same time as the foundation of colonial Colchester.[659] But the evidence is not decisive and relies to a large extent on the interpretation of a passage of Tacitus.²⁹ Excavations have identified a rudimentary street system of Claudian date, and a number of buildings, mostly, as at both London and Colchester, constructed with timber frames and wattle-and-daub walls, and so consumed in the Boudican fire. One block in Insula XIV has been identified as a range of shops, possibly built as a speculative venture by a Catuvellaunian noble and rented out to his retainers or managed by slaves.³⁰ The forum and basilica are dated by the dedicatory inscription to a.d. 79,³¹ although earlier structures may still lie undiscovered beneath them. Thefown was encompassed, probably in the Claudian period, by a bank and a ditch; when the town later expanded beyond them this line was commemorated by two triumphal arches set astride the London- Chester road.³²

Two other embryonic urban settlements may be considered as belonging to this period and both lie within the likely kingdom of Cogidubnus. The site of the town at Chichester, in the kingdom's heartlands, had an early military presence, but it is not known preciselyhow long it lasted. Yet, alongside the military base, or after it, there is evidence for a major public building dedicated during Nero's Princi­pate.³³ Probably slightly later, the Cogidubnus inscription³⁴ displays advancing Romanization, not only in the existence of a temple to the purely classical cult of Neptune and Minerva, but also to social organization in the collegium fabrorum, or guild of craftsmen. Also, very likely situated in Cogidubnus' kingdom, the Iron Age oppidum at Silchester has produced elements of early urbanized development which included a bathhouse and amphitheatre³⁵ of Neronian date, and a slightly later, but still Neronian, timber building on the site of the laterforum and basilica-³⁶ This building has been variously interpreted as a market square, a residence for Cogidubnus or military principia. But the two phases of fortification on different alignments which were thought to belong in the same context, have now been shown to be of pre-Roman origin.³⁷

Communications rapidly came to play a crucial part in the develop­ment of the new province. Roads, such as Watling Street, Ermine Street, Stane Street and the Fosse Way, were primarily constructed for military reasons, but, once in existence, would have been used by all.³⁸ They linked a series of burgeoning ports such as Richborough, Dover, Fishbourne, Colchester and London, which provided havens for the increasing number of merchants wishing to exploit the new markets. No doubt the major rivers were likewise pressed into service; it is worth noting that water transport was much cheaper.³⁹ It should also be remembered that the main roads, even with their straight alignments, metalled surfaces and good drainage, probably degenerated into a series of muddy potholes in winter, possibly making road transport in Britain, apart from pedestrians and pack animals, a seasonal affair which was confined mainly to the summer. The upkeep of the road system, together with its ancillary structures such as bridges, devolved upon the local magistrates of the town or civitas through whose area they passed.

514 I 3 BRITAIN 43 B.C.—A.D. 69

Verulamium, Colchester and London, and in the kingdom of Cogidub­nus. It has, indeed, been claimed that in these rural areas the pace of Romanization outstripped that in the new towns, with better quality housing appearing in the countryside at an earlier date.⁴⁰ It may be, though, that these first ventures into Romanized country life were not the work of native Britons, but of migrants from Gaul or further afield, eager to invest in the new province. Such villas as Eccles (Kent), or Angmering (Sussex), both probably of late Neronian or early Flavian date, would seem to fit best into this category, but the early foundation at Rivenhall (Essex) is held to have been built by a rich native landowner.⁴¹ The stimulus given by the Roman occupation to increased agricultural production was at first twofold: the demands of the tax-collector and the food requirements of the army. Whenever or wherever troops have been stationed in foreign or occupied territory, they have always created a demand and have become a source of accessible wealth for the local populations; the Roman army in Britain was no different. It is unlikely that British farmers could have immediately supplied all the food needed by the army. Total requisition would probably not have been a workable policy for an army of permanent occupation, since it would have left the producers to starve. Nevertheless, it must be reckoned that, within a reasonable time, production would have been stimulated sufficiently to meet most needs. This could only have been done by increasing the areas of arable land, the clearance of which would have helped in supplying the sudden demand for the huge quantities of timber required for construct­ing the many new military and urban buildings. Once production had begun to expand, it must have occurred to many British farmers that there were profits to be made by increasing it still further, in order to supply other markets offered by the new towns. This, or something like it, will have been the economic base on which, in time, the villa system grew.

in southern Gaul, and other fine wares from places like Lyons;[660] mortaria, kitchen mixing bowls, also came in quantity. At first, Bridsh potteries only supplied coarse wares, many sdll of Iron Age, wheel-made, traditional types. Gradually, however, new forms began to infiltrate, and within a decade or two, several centres were in full production, supplying both military and civilian markets. Other imports included glassware from the eastern Mediterranean and metalwork from Gaul and Italy. But Britain slowly built up its own industries, which, apart from the manufacture of pottery, were usually situated in the towns. A bronze-smith's workshop existed at Verulamium before the Boudican rebellion, where goods would have been both manufactured and sold on the premises.[661] Unfortunately, the evidence for industries and trade connected with organic materials such as wood, leather or cloth, does not often survive. But there is evidence for the exploitation and export of minerals such as Wealden iron and more notably the lead/silver ores in the Mendips worked possibly as early as a.d. 49 by a detachment of legio II.[662] It is interesting that the pattern of trade between Britain and other parts of the empire in some ways resembled that of modern trade between developed and undeveloped countries, the former exporting manufactured goods and the latter raw materials. Strabo listed corn, cattle, hides, slaves, gold, silver, iron and hunting dogs as British exports in the time of Augustus; ivory ornaments, amber, glass and other manufactured trinkets came in return, although wine and oil might well be added to the list.⁴⁵

vii. religion

The new province was already well served by its native cults, which tended to be localized; yet there is evidence from the Roman period for the existence of tribal deities, such as Brigantia,⁴⁶ and for sites which had more far-reaching significance, such as Bath with its deity, Sulis, presiding over the hot springs.⁴⁷ In most instances, Celt and Roman possessed a common basic level of superstition.⁴⁸ Consequently, the introduction of classical cults would have struck an immediate response; Celtic and Roman deities often shared similar areas of supernatural influence, so that Minerva could be identified both with Sulis at Bath and Brigantia in the north. But totally foreign to British religious practice was the introduction of the imperial cult, with its physical centre at Colchester. This provided a common element in the empire which had

13«. BRITAIN 43 B.C.—A.D. 69

an enormous diversity of religious practice and at the same time incorporated expressions of loyalty to the imperial household. It required an expensive commitment on the part of the leading inhabitants of the province - the size and magnificence of the temple of Claudius attracted unfavourable comment even in Rome. Yet the concept had worked well in Gaul, with its great centre at Lyons, and there was no reason to believe that it would not work in Britain; that it was to become one of the causes and focal points of the Boudican rebellion could not have been foreseen.

₅i6

The account given above suggests that the process usually described as Romanization in Britain was very uneven in place, time and depth. Although the Romans encouraged aemulatio in their provinces and often provided models of behaviour or structure, little pressure was applied to force the change. The rate, therefore, at which any individual or community adopted the new ways was largely a matter of personal inclination. Provided that existing ways of life and behaviour were acceptable to the Roman administration, and taxes were paid, no change was demanded. Naturally, therefore, the fastest rate of Romanization is to be detected in those areas of Britain which had been affected by the most recent migrations from Gaul, whose people had already been in closer contact with Roman culture. Practical, less often financial, help might be provided for Romanizing communities, as in the founding of new towns; but in the end, the main burden of the cost had to be paid by those same communities or its individual members. This, in itself, imposed the limit to the progress of Romanization. Strictly, the Roman civil administration was not concerned with the welfare of society, except insofar as a well-ordered province made tax collection easier. Nor could it do much more to help, even given the best of intentions. It was probably no more than a few hundred strong, consisting mainly of military personnel seconded for these duties, and simply did not have the manpower to influence every individual member of the estimated 2 to 3 million population of the province. Consequently, it could only function properly through delegation of responsibilities to the native people; the degree of delegation could vary greatly from place to place depending on the natives' fitness to accept it. Hence, also, the towns, villas and other structures of Roman Britain ultimately exhibit many variations in size, planning and degree of sophistication, mainly conditioned by the presence or absence of financial restraints, or will.

CHAPTER 13/ GERMANY

С. RŬGER

I. INTRODUCTION

After 50 B.C. when Caesar left Gaul, Gaul's eastern and northern border lay on the Rhine.¹ The aim of securing the Roman north west against migratory movements and wild attacks from north and east by means of a border line that could be precisely marked out was achieved. In the upper Danube region of central Europe, to be sure, the policy was limited to gaining control over the alpine passes through which for almost 300 years uncontrollable attacks on Rome's alpine approaches, indeed attacks on the city itself, had been launched.

Caesar's conquest of Gaul had an effect on the migratory movements which had obviously been taking place for centuries in the north-west part of the European continent. Caesar would not countenance the continued crossing to the left bank of the Rhine by Germans. But Germani Cisrhenani were already present on the left bank of the river. According to Caesar's own definition the latter included the Eburones in the area between the Rhine and Maas and the Caerosi, Paemani, Segni and Condrusi who inhabited the Eifel and the Ardennes. But the epithet Germani might never have meant more to him than 'stern warriors'. Geographically one must include the Texuandri to the west of the Dutch and Belgian river Maas. Although the amount of Celtic in their languages seems easier to isolate and define than the Germanic, which was still at its earliest stage of development, we can identify some characteristics of primitive Germanic character, like the doubling of

¹ The main literary sources for Germany in this period are Cassius Dio (Books liv-lvi), Velleius Paterculus (11, 60-132) and Tacitus (Ann. 11, xi.16—19, xn.27—8, xin.55-6; Hist. iv.12-37, 54-79, v.14—26 (Civilis and the Batavian Revolt)), Strab. iv.3ff (i9ocff) and 289-329c Book vn). Tacitus' Geraania, although written at the end of the first century a.d., contains a great deal of relevant and important information. The literary sources are collected by Capclle 1957 (e 572) and Klinghoffer 1955 (e 582). The inscriptions are collected in CIL xiii; for later additions see R. Finke, BRGK 17 (1927) 31-105,201-14; H. Nesseihauf,ibid. 27(1937), 66-13, H. Lieb, H. Nesselhauf,ibid., 40(1959) 129-216, U. Schillinger-Hafele, ibid. 58 (1977) 473-561. For coins see the volumes of Die FundntSn^en der romiseben Zeit in Deutscbiand. There is a huge amount of archaeological evidence, much of which may be found in the periodicals Germania, Bonner ĵabrbŭcber and BRGK. There are useful surveys by Schonberger 1969 (e 591) and Raepsaet-Charlier 1975 (e 587). See also ch. 13d, no. i.

517

Map 9. Germany,

certain consonants or throaty pronunciations unknown to the Celtic speaker.²

To north and west these tribes were hemmed in by Belgic tribes who had, according to Caesar, a Gallic character - the Menapii, the Nervii, the Remi and Treveri. The last-named made considerable play of their Germanic origin, according to Tacitus, something which is difficult to reconcile with the 'Germani qui trans Rhenum incolunt' involved in Caesar's Helvetian affair.³ Linguistics and archaeology have brought to light little or nothing Germanic in the territory of the Treveri, or in the territory which later became the Agri Decumates - nothing at least that can be measured against the culture of the Weser and Elbe Germans as revealed by archaeology, or by the findings of Celticists in the fields of genetic affiliation and linguistic geography. Were the Treveri involved perhaps in the 'Germanic' tribal thrust into the heart of Gaul after 113 B.C., or that of 109 which brought defeat to the ex-consul, Marcus Iunius Silanus, or were they among those who eventually settled in the heart of Gaul after 115?⁴

How ancient can tribal traditions be? What was the Germanic element that made the Tacitean Treveri allegedly so proud of their origins? It is to be found according to linguists and archaeologists as sparsely in the Moselle area as on the right bank of the Rhine in south-west Germany, where language survivals from the pre-Germanic occupation (i.e. in the period before the Alamannic raids of a.d. 233) show next to no Germanic traits. That is also true of the Nemetes, Triboci and Vangiones who moved under Caesar or in the post-Caesarian period to settle on the left bank of the Rhine. Nervii, Menapii, Eburones and Treveri mark the northern edge of the oppidum-based civitates of the second and first centuries B.C. (LaTĉneCtoLa Tĉne Di). This is always viewed as Celtic. By contrast the north was populated by tribes who in the post-Caesarian disposition belonged to the area south and west of the Rhine as far as the North Sea: Cananefates, Batavi, Suebi (Sugambri/Ciberni), Ubii, Nemetes, Triboci and Vangiones, and on the right bank Tacitus' 'levissimus quisque Gallorum' in the abandoned Helvetian area of south-west Germany, later the agri Decumates.⁵ It is not possible, as yet, to establish the pattern of these migrations. A successful attempt to reconcile literary sources with archaeological evidence has so far only been made in the field of coinage. As Tacitus says, the Batavians formed part of the large tribal unit of the Chatti whose centre was on both banks of the river Lahn in the Westerwald and the Taunus mountains. A

The names of soldiers (such as Chrauttius) at Vindolanda, garrisoned by Tungrian and Batavian units at the end of the first century a.d., appear to be the earliest evidence of this kind, see A.K. Bowman, J.D. Thomas, J.N. Adams, Britannia 21 (1990) 33-52; Weisgerber 1968 (e 599) 143-68.

Tac. Germ xxviii, Caes. BGall. 1.22-9, ^CSP- ^z'-4- ⁴ Livy. Epit. 63, App. BCiv. 1.29.

⁵ Tac. Germ, xxix.4.

Chattan dependency has proven to be obvious for the Batavian coinage in La Тёпе D2.[663] We can say nothing, however, about other material remnants of a migration which occurred a generation after Caesar, although one might expect these people to have had the ability and experience to produce pottery and to have brought with them the techniques of production which would leave their mark, for at least a generation or two, in the type of ware and the shapes of the vessels.

The setdement of these tribes in the north west of Caesar's Gaul took place with or without Rome's approval and supervision. The literary sources for the period between Caesar's departure and the arrival of troops on the Rhine under Augustus (16 в.с.) make repeated comments, particularly with reference to the time between M. Agrippa's two periods of activity in this region (39/8 and 19/18 b.C.), which lead to the conclusion that there was a deliberate policy of settling right-bank Germans on the left bank of the Rhine. And many a commander on the Rhine claimed prestige at Rome for a victory 'de Germanis' or for outstanding feats of military engineering such as the digging of canals or the re-routing of waterways. Of course the post-Caesarian forces in Gaul were distributed according to plans which were in no way directed to give them a function protective of the Rhine zone, as is shown by both the literary and the archaeological evidence for the deployment of winter garrisons throughout the interior of Gaul. Tiberius and Claudius provided for that for the first time between a.d. 17 and 47. Moreover, a miserable defeat, like that of the general Lollius in 17/16 в.с. ('maioris infamiae quam detrimenti', 'involving more ignominy than actual damage'),[664] demonstrated the tactical deployment of the post-Caesarian army as a striking force. That left the Germans on the right bank enough time to settle down, even without Rome's blessing, in the devastated land formerly belonging to the Eburones and the Menapii who had been pushed to the Channel coast.

The north-west European lowlands reveal that cultural movements spread from south to north, doubtless for the whole of post-Neolithic prehistory and particularly during the Hallstatt and La Тёпе periods (800-50 B.C.). The most northerly evidence for large-scale tribal organi­zation and aristocratic tradition can be traced in Treveran territory. The war coalition of the Eburones fell apart again immediately after their defeat by Caesar. The name of the Eburones is no longer found in the Roman period. Their heartland on both sides of the Maas is for the well- informed elder Pliny a diffuse tribal area, 'pluribus nominibus'.[665] The impoverished isolation of the north, which until the third century в.с.

enjoyed an 'epilithic culture', using old-fashioned stone topis and implements, can only be explained in terms of lack of local metal resources and the lack of economic opportunities for obtaining metal by exchange. It was very difficult in the first millennium в.с. for the new technology to gain a foothold in the poor diluvial geology of north-west Europe. In the rich south of the area, as in central Gaul, we come across names of local aristocrats whom we can recognize as the clientelae of those families who in the second and first centuries B.C. played a part in Roman campaigning in Gaul: Domitii, Cornelii, Valerii, Vibii, Calpurnii. In this Romanized clientela we often find the title amicus populi Romani.

In the north such pre-Caesarian involvement with Rome as an important instrument of Romanization is missing. There are no lowland finds of early first-century amphorae of type Dressel ia in the continental north west.⁹ Diplomatic contact with the German king Ariovistus went as far as the exchange of exotic royal gifts in hellenistic style.¹⁰ Caesar did not change the system, but with frontier security in mind emphasized the difference between cis- and trans-rhenane people. Here there arises a curious dichotomy between archaeology and linguistics on the one hand and ancient (and also modern) historiography on the other. To judge by the canons of typology and language the north—south divide follows an east—west line north of the Eifel and Ardennes, while historians place it east and west of a north-south line along the Rhine. This division takes the form of a cross - it is, quite literally, a crux. All the models advanced to account for the popular groupings and process of ethnogenesis in the north-west quarter of this crucial field, such as the idea of an independent north-west block that differs from the Germanic and Celtic and repre­sents a genuine third force, have so far proved unsatisfactory, despite all the efforts of historians and archaeologists.

The establishment of Roman rule in north Gaul can be seen archaeolo- gically at central places like the great Treveran oppidum of the Titelberg in Luxembourg. Here we have names of money-coining Treveran chieftains who are dated by the numismatists to between the arrival of Caesar in Gaul and the crushing of a Treveran revolt in 29 в.с. They produced the so-called second Treveran group of coins (the first belongs to pre-Caesarian times).¹¹ Vocarant[ ] and Lucotius appear as pre- Caesarian chieftains' names, while Pottina and Arda occur under Caesar. None of these personalities crop up in Caesarian literary records. There seem to be no later coin legends belonging to Treveran chieftains. Then there appear the issues of Aulus Hirtius, probably of 45 B.C. In this year, in which he became pro-praetor of Gaul and received the tide imperator, his minting perhaps reflects the triumphal elephant-ride of Cn. Domitius

⁹ Roymans 1987 (e 588). ¹⁰ Caes. BGall. 1.44, Pliny, HN 11.170.

¹¹ See Heinen 1985 (e 580) 27-50.

Ahenobarbus (cos. 122 b.C.), after his victory over the Allobroges in 121 b.C., which saw the end of tacdcal deployment of elephants on the European continent. The final type in the Treveran coin series was issued by the freedman Germanus, mint-master of an aristocrat Indutil- lus in about 10 b.C., and thereafter it was perhaps minted in the new Treveran capital of Augusta Treverorum.¹² Interestingly, a Roman garrison was posted on the Titelberg from 29 B.C. until the Augustan offensive of 16 B.C., without causing the abandonment of the surround­ing oppidum. This garrison must have needed the large quandty of small change which was found there and which had to a large extent been minted there, too. For the first dme now, Roman imported goods appear in the north west of continental Europe.The merchants who followed Caesar's army must have left behind Mediterranean amphora types and Campanian ware along with types of this period. So far they have been found neither on the Rhine nor in the whole region attributed to the northern tribes. The few Campanian-style black sherds and the wine and garum amphorae were found at hill-sites belonging to the ppst-Caesarian period. That sets the north-western area of Gaul clearly apart from the south. Here exports from the coast of Campania have left their traces on the Ligurian coast and the Cote d'Azur, then up the Rhone and Saone and so on to the Rhine bend, where typically the goods are not carried down the Rhine, but north-eastwards right across the later Raetia to the Danube. It seems that there was a trade route in wine from the Mediterranean before the great upheavals in our area which took place between La Тепе В and La Тепе С in the Eifel-Ardennes region. These upheavals may perhaps lie behind the tribal tradition of the Treveri about their Germanic origin. Be that as it may, these Mediterranean imports have nothing to do with Romanization. The few black sherds of Campanian ware and the wine and garum amphorae of the north west turn up at places which must be the result of post-Caesarian military logistics and associated trade, such as we see on the Titelberg in Luxembourg and perhaps on the Petrisberg at Trier.

A number of other matters bear on the question of Romanization. It is useful and valid to adduce Roman nomenclature in the north west as an indicator of Romanization. It can be emphasized that we know many Iulii, Tiberii and Claudii in our area of interest. The list of the north-west Gallic nobility from the Ubii, Treveri, Batavi and Cananefates caught up in the revolt of a.d. 69/70 is full of these names. Their families will scarcely all have received Roman citizenship in Caesar's time - perhaps not even the majority did so. It seems that the Romanization of Gaul after the second triumvirate will have followed the same course as it did in the East, where clientelae were formed in the triumviral period through

¹² See Heinen 1985 (e 580) 19-30, 58-9.

the Aemilii and Antonii. Obviously in Octavian's territory and during the interregnum the same process took place in the name of the Iulii as a reaction to his adoption. One must not underestimate the vivid memory of Caesar expressed in myths about him in eastern Gaul and the Rhineland. The temple of Mars at Cologne for example possessed a sword of Caesar's, a precious relic steeped in omens:¹³ in the frontier lands of eastern Gaul there was a noble whose pedigree reflected descent from a liaison of Iulius Caesar with his maternal ancestor.¹⁴ As early as the time of Agrippa's presence and under the later governors of both Germanies, bridge building over the Rhine — and much else besides — must have had its origins, at least to some extent, in emulation of Caesar (aemulatto Caesaris). The tendency of modern historiography to assign fixed dates to everything, and to offer other explanations for the Rhine bridges should not obscure the fact that Iulius Caesar's image was still a living force on the Rhine throughout the first century a.d.

Agrippa, the most intelligent and promising of Augustus' generals, did not see himself in a leading role. Both his periods of activity in this region, that of 39/38 B.C. and that of 19/18 B.C., served less to give him a high profile in Gaul than to reinforce the posidon of Octavian/ Augustus. The most important date for the establishment of the ideology of the new Caesar was the erecdon at Lugdunum of the Pan- Gallic altar, the Ara Galliarum, traditionally dated to 12 B.C., the year of Agrippa's death.¹⁵ There followed, probably in the first decade a.d. the foundation of an Ara Ubiorum along the same lines as the ideological centre of the cult of Rome which had already been provided for the Gauls at the confluence of the Saĉne with the Rhone at Lyons. But the Ara Ubiorum was not brought into being until a firm basis had been laid for the occupation of the land between the Rhine and the Elbe, a development designed to protect Gaul and to create a new province north of the Alps which bordered Caesar's old conquests.

The period between 16 в.с. and the defeat of Varus in a.d. 9, or rather to the final abandonment of the policy of conquest east of the Rhine in a.d. 17, is characterized by a long-term strategy of pincer manoeuvres. On the Rhine and on the North Sea coast, on Lake Constance and on the Hochrhein, on the Lech and Danube, these depended on amphibious tactics. The precondition was the collection of military and geographical intelligence from a base on the Rhine; the compilation of such infor­mation could well have been started by Agrippa, given his geographical interests, in 39/8 or 19/18 в.с. Likewise the alpine passes from the south and on the east flank of the zone of occupation were secured by the annexation of the kingdom of Noricum.

It is an attractive hypothesis that Camp A at Novaesium/Neuss, so far the only camp dated to between 16 and 12 b.C., was built principally for this intelligence-gathering operation. The construction of all other fortresses and forts seems to have taken place after 12 B.C. and may be supposed to have followed the establishment of the reconnaissance camp at Novaesium/Neuss c. 16 B.C. This camp lies at the end of an important road that links the continental north west with the Mediterranean, the Rhine with the Rhone. It leads from Marseilles, up the Rhone via Lugudunum/Lyons to Andematunnum/Langres and Divodurum/Metz, then down the Moselle to Augusta Treverorum/Trier and through the Eifel-Ardennes range via Beda Vicus/Bitburg, then down the river Erft to Novaesium/Neuss. After about 5 B.C. a branch road was built which later became more important - the road from Belgica Vicus/Billig to Ara Ubiorum/Cologne.¹⁶

The troops were transferred from the interior of Gaul to their operational base camps on the Rhine. The most important role in the scheme was played by the sites which lay opposite the mouths of the tributaries which flowed into the Rhine north or east of Cologne: Mogontiacum/Mainz opposite the mouth of the Main, Novaesium/ Neuss opposite the Ruhr, Vetera/Xanten opposite the Lippe, Novioma- gus/Nijmegen opposite the Yssel, perhaps also a site opposite the mouth of the Neckar, another in the area of Basle and certainly Fecdo/Vechten as a base for amphibious operations towards the North Sea.

The major events of the period between 16 в.с. and a.d. 17 on the Rhine are in the mainstream of imperial history: here we are mainly concerned with the important stages in the Romanization of this area. Four lines of penetration from the Rhine have been identified. The first is the line from Nijmegen via Vechten along the Frisian and Chaucan coast to the mouth of the Weser; the second is the line from Xanten up the Lippe towards Cheruscan territory and the Weser; the third a line from Mainz northwards through the Wetterau towards the middle Lahn, Fuld

¹⁶ For bibliography see Racpsaet-Charlier 1975 (e 587) 92-3.

and Werra towards the Weser and Elbe. A fourth line of penetration appears to have had its base of operation south of Mainz in the territory of the Vangiones and to strike west-east into the territory of the Marcomanni, touching at a tangent the two southward bends of the river Main; the evidential support for the existence of this line is, however, still poor. In addition, there is another line of penetration leading from the Basle area by way of Dangstetten and Hiifingen to the north east and the Danube.

The result of the offensives along these routes was the conquest of the area by Drusus and Tiberius in the period up to 8 B.C. when the protection of Gaul seems to have been secured by a German buffer zone. Between 6 в.с. and a.d. i Domitius Ahenobarbus as commander-in- chief would have used the operational routes out from Mainz to reach the Elbe. Perhaps the recently found traces of a Roman camp in the vicinity of Wiirzburg are evidence for his activities in the settlement of the Hermunduri in southern Thuringia and north Franconia.[666]

Various enterprises were launched at this time by Roman com­manders using the pressure of annexation, as well as the practice of securing the allegiance of the nobility through attachment to the army. This is the period when chieftains' sons like Arminius obtained officer rank in the Roman army and Roman citizenship for themselves, and when Ahenobarbus became involved in the internal affairs of the Cherusci by attempting to reintroduce political refugees.[667]

The disturbances which broke out in a.d. i, described by the eye­witness Velleius Paterculus as an 'immensum bellum', demanded renewal of the measures taken in the previous generation.[668] Tiberius took energetic action. An amphibious army and fleet operation on the old pattern took place again up to the Elbe. While the land between Rhine and Elbe had, on the face of it, been restored to dependency on Rome, a new threat in the guise of the Marcomannic Empire of King Maroboduus arose on Tiberius' eastern flank. The combined troops of Germania, Raetia and Illyricum were mobilized against him. Once more the line of advance from Mainz through Chattan territory, up the Main towards the Saale and Elbe was used as the western offensive route against Maroboduus. The identity and location of the easternmost fortress belonging to those forward thrusts seems now to be confirmed by the recent discovery of a military base at Marktbreit on the river Main, 2 5 km east of Wiirzburg.²⁰

In or before a.d. 7 P. Quinctilius Varus took over the command of the army in Germania. Varus was married to a daughter of Agrippa and Claudia Marcella senior, and so belonged to the immediate circle of Augustus and Agrippa.²¹ After Augustus' eastern journey of 21 B.C. he came to the princeps attention and enjoyed his personal patronage. Velleius Paterculus describes him as more of an administrator than a general²² and the organization of supply routes and an infrastructure for the imposition of tribute was clearly now thought necessary. In a.d. 9, however, Arminius, a Roman eques and aristocratic leader of the Cherusci, succeeded in uniting the disaffected circles of the nobility between Rhine and Elbe to such effect that he was able to achieve the catastrophic defeat of the Roman forces in the Teutoburg Forest in which three legions, three aloe and six cohorts, over 20,000 men all told, were lost.

The result was an immediate abandonment of the strong points built between 8/7 b.C. and a.d. 9 along the lines of communication. Neverthe­less, the bridgehead on the right bank of the Rhine opposite Mainz was held, as also, perhaps, was a bridgehead on the right bank opposite Vetera.

On the right bank of the Rhine the influence of the Elbe Germans was now strengthened. The latter took over the area round Bad Neuheim and Wiesbaden, with its important salt reserves, as their administrative centre. It had previously been occupied by the Ubii who had now migrated to the left bank of the Rhine. This immigrant element of the Chatti, the Mattiaci, is also described by Tacitus as German,²³ but all the traces of their language which we can recognize are Celtic. They have this in common with the Nemetes and the Triboci, tribal units with Celtic names, who likewise crossed to the left bank of the Rhine; in this area only the Vangiones are linguistically Germanic. Of the Elbe Germans, contingents of the great tribal coalition of the Suebi setded on the upper Rhine on the right hand side of the river. Perhaps they were sections of tribes from Maroboduus' realm who migrated under Roman pressure to the vicinity of the Rhine.

The earliest Romanizing tendencies revealed by the historical sources concern only the high Germanic nobility of the area between the Rhine and the Elbe. Thus, members of the right-bank aristocracy served as priests at the Ara Ubiorum. The Romans, probably consciously, made the decision not to erect another provincial altar on the Lugdunum pattern between Rhine and Elbe; indeed, the altar founded among the Ubii in the last decade b.C. remained the ideological cult-centre for the newly conquered territories. When Gaius and Lucius Caesar the grand­sons and adopted sons of the emperor died, institutionalized commem-

²¹ PKa/n 1.10. ²² Veil. Pat. 11.117.2-4. и Tac. Germ. xxix.

oration of them in cult form (perhaps at dynastic altars, inscriptions from which have been found in several north Gallic cities) served to reinforce the presence and impact of Rome in the newly conquered territory.

iii. the period of the establishment of the military zone(a.d. 14—90)

The overall command of Germanicus over the armies of both Upper and Lower Germany came to an end in a.d. 16. The separation of the two armies (exercitus superior, exercitus inferior) of the Rhine, had taken place in a.d. 14, as Tacitus states.²⁴ It took Tiberius three years after the death of Augustus to pacify the troops of Lower Germany, to repair the unavoidable political damage on the right bank of the Rhine through carefully targeted campaigns, and to recall the troops to the bases on the left bank of the Rhine which had been used for the offensive towards the Elbe. Thereafter there was an exercitus Germanicus superior and an exercitus Germanicus inferior with respective command centres in Mogondacum/ Mainz and Ara Ubiorum/Cologne. Since the Caesarian period, Rome had been in no doubt that the people living on the left bank of the Rhine included Germans. The terminology and the mixed military and civil character of Rome's administration through provincial legates (legati Augustipro praetore) allowed the institutionalization not only of the two German armies but also of two provinciae, a term which in its strictest traditional sense denotes a military command. It was a brilliant stroke of political propaganda to disguise the abandonment of the land between the Elbe and the Rhine. 'Germania' existed despite the abandonment and in the following sixty years the region was developed into two regular provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, which were really only pocket- handkerchief-sized military zones along the eastern boundary of the Tres Galliae. Successful attempts at consolidation under Vespasian and his sons, however, eventually made it possible to design a new positive programme that led in about a.d. 8 5 to the foundation of the two official provinces, Germania Superior with its capital at Mainz and Germania Inferior with its capital at Cologne.

The Gallo-German nobility on both sides of the Rhine, whose allegiance Rome as the occupying power sought to secure through individual grants of citizenship and absorption into the ranks of the equites, was a pillar of Romanization. But Romanization was unstable, as the crisis provoked by Arminius between a.d. 5 and 9 demonstrated. That remained manifesdy the case until the Batavian revolt. Within the major tribes on the eastern border who had remained strong, conflict between the pro-Roman and the tribally conservative forces was

²⁴ Tac. Аяя. 1.31.

constantly breaking out, as it did in a.d. 21 with the revolt of the Treveran and Aeduan nobles, Iulius Florus and Iulius Sacrovir; the pro- Roman element among the Treveri was led by Iulius Indus.²⁵ As always, the Treveran affair ended in victory for the occupying power and its supporters. The losers were penalized by loss of land on the Rhine between Bingen and Koblenz, a loss which affected the whole of the Treveran civitas. There may have been other,'similar episodes, less well attested. Tacitus mendons a Chattan war which should be placed in the mountains of Westerwald and Taunus and is confirmed by the recent discovery of a bridge across the Rhine which can be dated by dendro­chronology to a.d. 42.²⁶ It may have been incidents of this kind in Friesland which lay behind the taking of hostages from the Frisii, after the defeat of L. Apronius, and their settlement in a.d. 47 by Corbulo.²⁷

The second category of obviously reliable allies of the Roman occupation were the native east-Gaulish long distance traders, often identical with the shipowners on the Gallic and German inland water­ways. We meet them in shippers' guilds on Lake Geneva, on the Seine, in the warehouses of Lyons and as wealthy, self-confident riverine carriers on the Rhine. Here they present themselves, somedmes proudly, on the monuments as non-citizens, like the nauta, Blussus, in Mainz.²⁸ They maintain local burial rites and even on their tomb inscriptions they retain the individual dialect characteristic of their Gallo-Germanic region — the millstone exporters at Nickenich in the volcanic zone of the Eifel provide a good example of this phenomenon. These traders transport and import Mediterranean goods, above all wine and other Italian and Spanish commodities like garum, through Gaul to Britain. On a tribal basis they form club-like groups of consistentes with the army and in the mercantile centres on the Rhine — the merchants' clubs of Remi and Lingones, for example, associated with the military base at Vetera.²⁹ As merchants with good Gallic names they turn up even in Pompeii. Others, like the prosperous non-citizen (peregrinus) from Nickenich are connected to the army because it needed their merchandise, in this case the military quernstones which, like the helmets of the unit, were the property of the legionary centuriae-³⁰

Parallel to the assimilation of the nobility through a deliberate policy of granting citizenship, and through favours shown by the military to local negotiatores and mercatores, barge-owners and long-distance traders, a deliberate effort was made to urbanize important native settlements,

Tac. Ann. m.40-7.

Chattan War: Tac. Ann. xn.27-8. Dendrochronology of bridge: B. Schmidt, BJ 181 (1981) joi-ii. ²⁷ Tac. Ann. XI.19. a CIL xin 2.7067.

Citizen coniiitentei in civilian village and linked by trade to the army: CIL xn 11806 and C. Rfiger, ZPE 45 (1981) j 52-5.

J.L. Weisgerber 1969 (e 600) 87-102 = Germania 17 (19}}) 14-104.

first under Augustus and then more intensively under Claudius. Vespa­sian slowed down the process in the left-bank area of the frontier zone and concentrated on the Agri Decumates, but Trajan and Hadrian again forced the pace.

North of Lyons in the direction of the Rhine two colonial settlements came to prominence, Iulia Equestris (Nyon) and Augusta Raurica (Augst) both in northern Switzerland. In their cases the government seems to have been more generous with its grant of colonial rights than it was to Lugdunum/Lyons itself, which was first raised to colonial status under Claudius. Equestris and Raurica must therefore be seen as genuine military coloniae of veterans, while Lugdunum as a Roman provincial town was planned principally for the Gauls themselves as a centre for administration, and was to become a centre of coin production and of the cult of Rome and the emperor.³¹

The development in the north seems to have run along similar lines. Trier was founded by the emperor as Augusta Treverorum in the second decade b.C., but not at first raised to the status of colonia. In the north there was the altar to Rome at the Oppidum Ubiorum/Cologne. The creation of more coloniae and municipia in the Roman north west remained a slow process compared with other marginal parts of the empire such as Mauretania. Instead, the development of a civitas system was promoted as appropriate in a hinterland with few urban centres. In this way aspirations to legal grants of chartered status might be satisfied in due course — an obviously deliberate policy on the part of the imperial authority. The urbanization process continued in the Lower German military zone and in Gallia Belgica, proceeding from south to north, while in the Upper German military zone west of the Rhine there was no significant progress at all. In the Agri Decumates not one single settlement, even later on, was raised to the rank of colonia-. the town with the highest legal status was the municipium of Arae Flaviae/Rottweil.

Under Claudius Trier perhaps and Cologne certainly were raised to the status of coloniae. At Trier one might well imagine that Claudius, in keeping with his policy in other provinces, would simply raise the local settlement to the rank of colonia and make Roman citizens of its peregrine inhabitants, drawn from the upper echelons of the Treveri; Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium/Cologne, on the other hand, was made up of veteran colonists. That does not mean of course that a few Ubian notables were not to be found amongst the new ciuzens. There will certainly have been such instances — perhaps even nobles from the right bank of the Rhine as well. Without them, the institutional Romanizadon of the region would not have proceeded as quickly as it did in the period that followed. But the new colonia at Cologne, founded in a.d. 50, lay on

³¹ Dio xlvi.jo, cf. ch. i jd, pp. 469-70.

the Rhine between the legionary garrisons. There was consequently a strong enough veteran presence nearby for it to have been taken into consideration. Many of the first generation of Cologne's new citizens, Mediterranean by origin, certainly migrated to the south again. Perhaps there were later addidons to the citizen body of Cologne under the Flavians and Trajan. Perhaps the 'domino' effect which we have seen under Claudius was behind the capital of the Cugerni or Ciberni at Xanten (PCibernodunum) obtaining the status of a municipium. At any rate, under Trajan it was given colonial status as the Colonia Ulpia Traiana, perhaps in 98, but certainly by 104. At the same time the administrative centre of the Batavians became an Ulpian municipium. The last act of municipalizadon falls in the reign of Hadrian or Pius. Roman chartered town status was extended to the territory of the Cananefates where a municipium Aelium (Municipium Aelium Cananefatium) was created near the coast.

The elite core of the Roman army, the Rhine legions, remained completely Mediterranean, while the east Gaulish-Rhenish nobility could only aspire to Roman citizenship through serving in the higher ranks of the auxiliaries. If, in Caesar's case, fear of the adversary was still a factor, it soon ceased to be. Even the catastrophic defeat in the Teutoburg Forest (a.d. 9) did not re-awaken the old Cimbric terror of the Germans. The decision against conquest as far as the Elbe was clearly taken on fully rational grounds; aemulatio Caesaris was confined to spectacular engineering achievements, like the copying of his exploits in bridging the Rhine. The latter became a kind of fashion among the commanding officers of the Upper and Lower German armies in the first half of the first century, undertaken on the part of the Rhine which Caesar had twice crossed in a remarkably short time. It is conceivable that every legate of Germania who strove for another posting and had military ambitions bridged the Rhine in Caesarian fashion as the pinnacle of his career in Germany.

The official view of the German opposition across the Rhine, particularly in the northern sector, was the logical reverse of that attitude: there was no broad defence in depth in the hinterland. The left bank which had been the old springboard for the conquest of Germania served everywhere as a defensive line against a possible German attack. To deploy the troops 'per ripam Rheni', as it was probably expressed, without the tacdcal support of the legionary reserves on the lines of penetration to the south into the heart of Gaul, meant (assuming, as we surely must, a realistic evaluation by the Roman military planners) that for the Roman army the German opposition on the right bank of the Rhine represented a negligible factor: land and adversary were simply not worth the trouble of occupadon, and any hostile movements close by could be easily reconnoitred from bases on the Rhine itself. Accordingly no legionary garrisons were required in Besan^on or Trier, in Tongeren or Bavay; the only exception was the legionary deployment on the upper Rhine, a shifting pattern between Vindonissa/Windisch on the Aare, Argentorate/Strasbourg and Mirebeau, an earlier posting of the Stras­bourg garrison south-westward toward Langres. All that seemed necess­ary was to hold auxiliary garrisons in north-east Gaul to extinguish possible local uprisings in the Gallic hinterland of the frontier. This tactical deployment came to an end in the 80s. In general the idea of maintaining in reserve a striking force drawn from the legionary garrisons away from the frontier was kept for the more serious opposition in Britain, Syria and north Africa.

The result of the Tiberio-Claudian arrangement along a river frontier stretching over 1,000km from Basle to Valkenburg (with offshoots on the right bank for military advances in Upper Germany) would have been a handicap if the enemy had been really strong. Not just in a.d. 69/ 70, but in 260 and 274 too, the frontier line was successfully penetrated; the attacks were driven home deep into the heart of the Gallic provinces and, in 274, right through to Spain. This frontier system was not designed against a powerful enemy.

The situation among the tribes on and in the vicinity of the left bank of the Rhine, even under Nero, remained one of considerable variety, so increasing Romanization is hard to recognize among those ranked below the aristocracy whose members had been given grants of Roman citizenship. Cananefates and Batavi were at first treated as feederati who could independently raise their own troops, so neither tribe was subject to Roman dilectus (levy), but both enjoyed the status of socii (allies). Their capital was Batavodurum. In accordance with the principle that grants of chartered town status spread northwards along the Rhine, the town will have received the name of Ulpia Noviomagus (perhaps in 104) and the right to hold a periodic market (ius nundinarum) in the second half of the second century. Together with the capital of the Cananefates it will have been raised to the rank of municipium. The Batavian units kept their national character however and at least during the period under consideration here (Augustus to Vespasian) they were in no sense the melting-pot from which a new Roman citizenry arose.

The Frisians in the north had co-operated with the Romans from the beginning. In the 20s there was a visible tightening of the Roman administrative grip on this area, but even under Tiberius interest in the area relaxed. In a.d. 47 Cn. Domitius Corbulo again attempted to bring about the formal subjection of the Frisian area. Though achieving some success, this development was no longer in accord with the imperial policy of Claudius, and the emperor ordered all military garrisons back to the left bank of the Rhine.³² A chain of forts which is now attested in the archaeological record was built along the Oude Rijn in Holland and the Niederrhein in Germany. It can be recognized as a Lower German limes on the left bank of the river, and represents a defensive measure to protect Lower Germany in that it simultaneously excluded the right- bank tribes from the empire and left them to fragment at the hands of their own quarrelling aristocradc factions. The Bructeri were the particular object of repeated successful Roman intervention until almost the end of the first century, up to the time of Nerva's governors of Lower Germany. This did not, however, prevent free passage to the left bank of the Rhine by unarmed right-bank Germans on a short-term basis.³³

North of the Lahn the Mattiaci (who like the Batavians are obviously of Chattan origin) and the pro-Roman Germanic population of the Wetterau appear on the scene as early as Germanicus' time. There are archaeological indications of settlement by Mattiaci round Wiesbaden in a civitas Mattiacorum in the years following a.d. 16.³⁴ Further south and direcdy adjacent are the civitates of the Triboci who transferred under Augustus to the left bank of the Rhine, and of the Nemetes and Vangiones who were integrated into the empire in the reign of Claudius at the latest. Their old homes beyond the frontier on the right bank of the Rhine appear to have been taken over by Elbe Germanic groups whose names we do not know.

The Upper Rhine in contrast to the Lower Rhine clearly represents a single settlement zone which has its western border in the Vosges and its eastern on the Black Forest ridge. As a result, from Augustus' day the Rhine was not conceived as a frontier, but was constantly being crossed by troops and controlled civilians. That continued to be true until the definitive establishment of Roman government in the Agri Decumates, that is the area between the Rhine and the Upper German limes. Here, groups of settlers filtered in, but they were evidendy not politically organized; Tacitus, amongst others, assures us of that.³⁵

The frontier situation in the two German provinces was characterized by and large by an effective Roman border control and good trading contacts with the Germans on the right bank of the Rhine. At the same time there was an absence of any strong Roman pressure for a thoroughgoing Romanization. The framework of native society in the Germanies was comparatively strong. The impact of Romanization on them, however, was very weak: in default of that, control was main­tained by the iron grip of a large concentration of Roman forces along the whole riverbank. After the death of Nero both German military zones were the stage for a three-year drama, an internal upheaval which

³² Tac. Am. xi.19. зэ fac. Ann. хш.56.2. ³⁴ Baatz and Herrmann 1982 (e 569) (}■

³⁵ Tac. Hist. iv. 32, 37, 67.

was supported by right-bank interests and is known by the name of the Batavian revolt.

The revolt demonstrates the surprising talents of the native leaders among the nobility of the left-bank tribes, from the Cananefates to the Lingones. They looked to their own special interests and those of their respective followers, often with great adroitness, and so far as the Batavian ringleader Iulius Civilis is concerned, perhaps also with some political success. This shows that either Rome did not succeed in suppressing, or the military leadership on the Rhine did not choose to suppress, or neutralize, the political gifts and instincts of the rich Rhenish nobility. There can be no question but that the interests of the left-bank tribal nobility lay in the maintenance of imperial unity, though Tacitus felt able to declare the revolt to be a 'bellum externum' in view of the particular form of the treaty arrangement between Rome and the Batavians.[669] So it may be seen that Romanization was making good progress among the aristocracy, at least after the reigns of Claudius and Nero. The strong Mediterranean element in the culture of the military rested like a thick blanket over every archaeologically tangible expres­sion of the indigenous substratum. In the course of the second century, however, the army took on a strongly Gallic character and this period affords us our first uninterrupted view of a Germanic and Gallo-Roman civil population.

CHAPTER 13^ RAETIA

H. WOLFF

At first glance it is an astonishing fact that Rome did not conquer the Alpine region and the southern German foothills of the Alps before 15 B.C., although she had already seized power over northern Italy more than 200 years before. This was, however, perfectly in accord with the Roman conception of security and foreign policy: principally it required reaction to military threats, which could manifest themselves either in hostile attacks on Rome or on her allies and would thus provoke a military crisis, or simply in the form of a mere display of power by an alien nation, that is one which only potentially jeopardized Roman security interests. As a rule, Rome did not take the initiative in attempting to obtain possession of specific areas as a consequence of internal policy decisions, although exceptions occur with increasing frequency during the late Republic. As a matter of fact, there was no important power in the region of the Alps and their northern foothills on which Roman foreign policy might focus. Apart from raids by small bands, which could radiate from the prehistoric tribal world at any time and in any place, the Alpine tribes had never threatened northern Italy.

The peoples of the Alps were dissipated into a multitude of smaller tribes or valley dwellers, who were in fact partly interconnected by linguistic and cultural bonds, although not by significant socio-political ties. No larger tribal agglomerations (such as a single tribal unit of all Raetians) had developed and there had been no bigger settlements of an urban type except in the Vindelician area north of the Alps. These tribes had learned literacy from the Italians, especially the Etruscans, and they used it for dedicatory, burial and building inscriptions. But this literacy was apparently not accompanied by the development of a system of administration.

Rome had at least conquered some of the valleys to the south of the Alps during the first century B.C. Particularly noteworthy is the growth of Tridentum, a municipium lulium, which underwent significant develop­ment under Caesar or Augustus at the latest; the latter had an important building erected here, possibly in 23 B.C. Between the Lex Pompeia of the years 89—87 B.C. and Augustus, even the Anauni, Sinduni and

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Tulliassi, who lived in the western side-valleys of the Adige (Etsch), had been attached to the 'town' by adtributio.[670] Noricum, which comprised the tribal units of the eastern Tyrol (Ostdrol), Carinthia (Karnten) and Styria (Steiermark), had never been hosdle to Italian traders and had usually maintained a peaceful attitude towards Rome. On the other hand, the tribes of the Alpine foothills, for the most part probably Celtic, suffered severely from raids by German warriors from Suebian Thu- ringia, Brandenburg and Saxony. The oppida of Manching, Kehlheim and Passau as well as the open settlement of Berching-Pollanten (situated north of Ingolstadt) had, according to the recently established chrono­logy, undoubtedly been destroyed by those bands in about 50—40 в.с.

In 15 B.C. Rome's interests in the central Alps and the Alpine foothills were only indirect. This was a consequence of the change in policy concerning Germany east of the Rhine — a redefinition which had primarily been caused by the defeat of M. Lollius: in order to deny the Germans the possibility of escaping southwards to Italy when attacked, Rome had to control the central Alps and their foothills. In contrast, the attacks of the 'Kammunioi' (Camunni) and the 'Vennioi' on the one hand and of some Noricans and Pannonians further in the east on the other (countered by P. Silius Nerva as proconsul of Illyria in 16 B.C. and avenged with the subjugation of the three Alpine peoples)[671] had probably played only a peripheral role of specious justification for the campaign of 15 B.C.; this gave Tiberius and Drusus, the two stepsons of Augustus, the opportunity of winning military glory cheaply and easily.

I. 'RAETIA' BEFORE CLAUDIUS

The military details of the campaign of conquest in 15 B.C. are fiercely disputed in scholarly literature and cannot at present be conclusively elucidated with the evidence available. The principal difficulty is that the order of the defeated tribes as listed in the only detailed source, the inscription of the Tropaeum Alpium at La Turbie (near Monaco),[672]cannot be definitively interpreted, because in too many cases the precise location of the tribal unit is unknown. From the evidence of Cassius Dio, Horace and other authors[673] it is nevertheless possible to reconstruct at least some essential features of the Roman action, which, because of the geographical conditions in the Alps, must have consisted of several independent and well-co-ordinated operations. Drusus and the main body of his forces attacked advancing from the Adige valley, where he fought the first major battle up-river from Trento. From there he moved forward into the valley of the Inn, certainly using the Reschenscheideck as well as the Brenner Pass. Possibly one of his subordinate commanders penetrated into the Alpine Rhine valley over the Spliigen Pass or the Maloja-Julier from Lake Como. A little later, Tiberius advanced by an unknown route, on which he had to face Raetians of the interior Alpine region, towards other hostile tribes, against whom he is assumed to have fought at Lake Constance and elsewhere. In a day's march from Lake Constance he is supposed to have reached the headwaters of the Danube (whatever is meant by this). On i August, the anniversary of the capture of Alexandria,⁵ the two brothers defeated the remaining enemies in a major battle. These might have been the Vindelicians and other tribes of the Alpine foothills, of whom, if we may believe Strabo,⁶ the Rukantioi (Runicates?) and the Kotuantioi (Cosuanetes?) belonged to the Raetian language-group. Of the tribes of adjacent Noricum, the Ambisontes were subdued by Drusus, possibly in the Salzach valley. Thus, in the course of a single summer's campaign Roman arms reached their target, and the two stepsons were able to bring the laurel of victory to Augustus in Gaul — giving Horace sufficient reason to praise the three of them to the skies. After that war we know of no anti-Roman revolts. The Alpine peoples wisely bowed to the superior power of Rome.

The most important political result of the campaign was the establish­ment of Rome's military presence in the northern Alpine foothills. For a few years - at most from about 15/14 b.c. to 8 b.c. - the greater part of a legion, probably the Nineteenth which later perished with Varus in the Teutoburg Forest (Wiehengebirge), was moved, together with auxiliary troops, to Dangstetten on the northern bank of the upper Rhine (opposite Tenedo/Zurzach). Further, a line of communication running along the Limmat, the Zŭrichsee and the Walensee to the Alpine Rhine valley was secured with several watch-towers. After the death of Drusus Dangstetten was abandoned and at the same time - an important weapons site (Oberhausen, now part of the city of Augsburg) was founded at the confluence of .the Wertach and the Lech. It existed until about a.d. 9 (or perhaps even a.d. 14-17) and should perhaps be explained in connexion with the recently discovered legionary fortress of Marktbreit-upon-Main. The Alpine foothills and the southern German region in general, however, were apparently not an important base for the attempted pacification of free Germany. The insignificant amount of military precaution in evidence seems more likely to have been intended for flank defence, a role which was assigned to the Upper German army. Surprisingly, the eastern part of the Bavarian Alpine foothills, especially the region where the river Inn flows out into the diluvial hilly country,

⁵ Hor. Carm. 1v.14.j4ff; Veil. Pat. 11.95.2. ⁶ iv.6.8 (206Q.

remained unnouced (just as the northern part of Noricum received no attendon in the Augustan period): for unknown reasons, the Suebi and other German bands seem even in the Caesarean and Augustan periods to have been more attracted by the region now called Suebia.

As regards the imposiuon of an administration, the organization of newly annexed areas proceeded slowly and hesitantly during the first two generations after the conquest. In this respect Raetia can again be compared to Noricum: for the period of legionary occupation, we have evidence for a legatus pro [pr(aetore) ijn Vindol(icis) together with his subordinate native prefect of the cohors Trumplinorum.¹ From the reign of Augustus (before a.d. 2) we probably have evidence of a former equestrian officer as procurator Caesaris Augusti in Vindalicis et Raetis et in valle Poenina per annos IIII ('procurator of Caesar Augustus in Vindelicia and Raetia and the Poenine Valley for four years').⁸ To approximately the same social rank belonged a former primipilus of the lower German legio XXI Карах, who discharged his duties in the central region of the Alps early in the reign of Tiberius as pra[ef(ectus)] Raetis Vindolicis valli[s PJoeninae et levis armatur(ae) ('prefect of the Raetians and the Vindelicians and the Poenine Valley and the light-armed auxiliaries').⁹ Thus the central Alpine region apparently had no provincial governor before Claudius and still seems not fully to have been a province at that time: with the exception of the receipt of tribute,¹⁰ which the tribes paid peaceably from 15/14 B.C., and the military supervision of light auxiliary troops including the native militia (levis armatura),ⁿ no obviously major administrative tasks or positions were created. So the title of the Roman representative might have alternated between procurator and praefectus, probably depending on the individual officer's previous career. We certainly should not expect that the later area of the province of Raetia at this time possessed clearly drawn borders with the German military command, with the external tribes and with what was to become the province of Noricum. Only on the border with Italy do we have to take into account a definitive territorial delimitation, because in this region the territories attached to the coloniae and municipia by adtributio must have been clearly defined; but even here the Claudian edict on the Anauni counsels caution.¹² The large federated civitas of the Helvetii, the small tribes of their former entourage (the Latobriges, Rauraci and Tulingi) and the two colonies of their former areas, certainly belonged to the administration of Gaul, whereas the Norican tribes in some way remained in their own regnum. Before the comprehensive organization of

¹ CIL v 4910 = ILS 847 = EJ² 141. > ILS 900j = EJ² 224.

» CIL ix 3044 = ILS 2689 = EJ² 244. '0 Strab. iv.6.9 (206Q.

" If the castellum Ire avium was situated in the area of the province of Raetia as it was later defined, CIL xin 1041 = ILS 2531 would attest such a unit of militia, thegaesati DC Raeti.

¹² ILS 206 = GCN 368.

the western Alps, therefore, the most sensible solution was to join the Valais (vallis Poenina) to the central Alpine region.

For military reasons the central Alpine region urgently needed roads. Drusus had already marked out the later Via Claudia Augusta from the Po to the Danube. This might similarly have been the case for the roads over the Splŭgen or Julier Passes. Even the road leading from Bregenz through Kempten, Epfach and Gauting and finally to Iuvavum/Salz- burg, belongs to those early years. Whatever the details, according to Strabo at any rate,¹³ Augustus was responsible for fundamental impro­vements to the Alpine roads and the passes.

Continuity of occupation by the pre-Roman population cannot be demonstrated in the archaeological record. But Cassius Dio¹⁴ specifically tells us that the conquered area was highly populous and that Rome for that reason recruited most of the young men into auxiliary formations and posted them out of the region, leaving only sufficient manpower for agricultural work. Amongst other tasks they fought under Germanicus against the Germans. In contrast, Rome seems to have shown great restraint in reforming the civil institutions of the tribal units. Nor did she attempt to promote the legal or socio-cultural Romanization of the Raetians and the Celts. There is no foundation of colonies, and even the construction of urban centres for the established tribes progressed only slowly. Not until the second decade after the conquest do archaeological discoveries attest the beginnings of urban settlements. As far as we can see, these were not developments of pre-Roman settlements, and the artefacts which have come to light give the impression of the presence of Roman manual workers and traders, who seem newly to have immi­grated from the Mediterranean. These settlements are mostly situated on the northern side of the Alps: Chur (Curia), Bregenz (Brigantium), Kempten (Cambodunum), Auerberg (probably Damasia), Epfach (Abo- diacum), Augsburg (Augusta Vindelicum) and Gauting (Bratananium). Brigantium, Cambodunum and Damasia had, according to Strabo,¹⁵ been the poleis of the Brigandi, Esdones and the Licates. But Cambodu­num alone seems to have been planned in the Roman manner, whereas the thriving 'town' on the Auerberg, lasdng only one generation, had actually been situated, astonishingly, at the aldtude of i,ooom. The contribudon of the military seems to have been small: only in Bregenz and in Rederzhausen near Augsburg have fortresses of the Tiberian period been found, whereas the other sites have yielded military equipment merely in the form of scattered finds; here, however, we have to allow for the possibility that these were merely locations for the manufacture or repair of military implements. If that were so, the central Alpine foothills and the mountains would hardly have been controlled at

» iv.6.6 (204C). •« liv.22.5. "5 iv.6.8 (206C).

all during the reign of Tiberius by Roman occupying forces - the closest military force was the legion which was stadoned in the fortress of Vindonissa/Windisch after a.d. 16/17. Nor do we know of any new setdements in the Augustan—Tiberian period in the Inn valley, the upper Adige valley, the eastern part of the later province of Raeda, or along the Danube. In the early imperial period the centre of Raeda lay in Suebia.

From the economic and fiscal point of view, what was to be the province of Raeda was not endcing - apart from a certain strategic importance for the German campaigns this area was apparently of no genuine worth to Rome.

ii. the claudian province

It was probably Claudius who abandoned Rome's reservations with regard to the Alpine region, assuming that we refuse to credit Caligula (who is supposed to have planned to build a city high up in the mountains)¹⁶ with such a degree of practicality and astuteness. One reason for the change in Roman attitudes may have been the more advanced state of development in Upper Germany and Pannonia, which gave an increased importance to the communication lines on and along the Danube. By now a massive dislocation of auxiliary units along the Danube had taken place and it was probably more logical to place the Raetian units under their own provincial governor. An attempt to improve the organization of the administrative machinery fits our general impression of the emperor Claudius and his interests.

Claudius sent an equestrian procurator to Raetia and Vindelicia. Because the troops which this official had under his command at this early stage included Roman citizens (at that time at least the cohors I civium Romanorum ingenuorum), the first known praesidial procurator {procur(ti­ter) Augustor(um)') held the additional title of pro leg(ato) provincial Raitiai et Vindelic(iai) et vallis Poenin(ai).¹⁷ He had his residence presumably in Kempten, not yet in Augsburg which at that time was only slowly developing into a 'town'. Under Claudius the Valais (vallis Poenina) probably remained separate from 'Raetia et Vindelicia' and was united with the Alpes Graiae as another procuratorial province. It was at this time, at the very latest, that the border was defined. In the north it followed the Danube, in the east the Inn, before turning to the south, soon after entering the Alps, and then making a final bend to the west, south of the Puster valley. The southern border with Italy ran for the most part along the heights of the Alpine watershed, but it included in Raetia the upper Isarco and Adige valleys up to Klausen and Merano, as well as the Tessine up to Bellinzona. The western border with Gallia Belgica and Upper Germany ran from St Gotthard to Mt Todi and Mt

¹⁶ Suet. Calig. 21. « CILv 39)6 = ILS 1548.

Glarnisch, passing between Zŭrichsee and Walensee to the north, then crossing the Rhine west of Tasgetium (Eschenz) and finally reaching the Danube east of Tuttlingen.¹⁸

The fortifications along the Danube were possibly first created at the end of the 30s a.d., even before the formal establishment of the province; in that case, the legion stationed at Vindonissa was probably in charge of this construction, because the line of fortresses had the function of safeguarding its right flank. The fortress of Aislingen together with the two small fortresses of Nersingen and Burlafingen are the earliest camps on the Danube so far known, dating back to late Tiberian times. Not very much later, in about a.d. 40, or between 40 and 50, the entire chain of fortresses from Emerkingen to Oberstimm (perhaps even as far as Weltenburg) was built. But again we have no evidence of camps in the interior Alpine region, which suggests that Roman rule was not threatened by internal unrest. Together with the camps, in whose surroundings soon civilian settlements (vici) developed, the roads which had earlier been delineated were upgraded and strengthened. This, in fact is attested only for the Via Claudia Augusta¹⁹ in 46, but, because a corresponding need existed, it is reasonable to hypothesise the same development for the other south—north and west-east connexions, as far as and along the Danube.

The most important issue for our understanding of the civil administ­ration is the question of how long the tribal units (civitates), which survived from pre-Roman times, continued in existence. This seems to be of fundamental importance, because there was no Roman 'town' in the province except the later, Hadrianic municipium Aelium Augusta Vindelicum and, apart from the civitas Curia and the civitates which are assumed to have existed around Brigantium and Cambodunum, no other local towns of peregrine status are attested; Curia, Brigantium and Cambodunum at least (as well as Augusta, later on) developed an urban character of a kind during the first century. To judge from the stated origines of soldiers, the Runicates, the Catenates and recently the Licates, seem to be attested as regional administrative bodies for the second half of the first century a.d. or even the second century a.d.²⁰ Further the Breones, whom Strabo claims to have been Illyrians, are still attested as a political unit in the sixth century.²¹ This justifies the belief that a comparatively large number of pre-Roman civitates continued to exist as

¹⁸ Many of the precise details of the route are open to dispute. Since its course had to be traced in a variety of sources covering the entire Roman period (some as late as the sixth century a.d.), it is impossible, except in the case of the frontier with the external tribes, to specify precisely what changes in the position of the borders may have occurred from time to time.

" CIL v 8002-3 (cf. ILS 208).

Licates: RMD 119; AE 1988,905. Runicates: AE 1940, 114. Catenates: AE 1935, 103.

Cf. Heuberger 1932 (E621) 149-67. Strab. iv.6.8 (206Q.

local units and to deal with the local administration of their own citizenry even as late as the middle Empire.²² Most of them obviously did not develop urban centres and perhaps for that reason have left no inscrip­tions. It is consequently impossible to locate all of these tribes accurately; we may only argue with some degree of probability that those of the Licates who were not absorbed by the municipium Augusta Vindelicum had setded on the upper Lech not far away from the Alps. With the end of the settlement on the Auerberg c. a.d. 40, Abodiacum (Epfach) may eventually have gained the position of capital of the Licates. The remainder of the tribes of the Alpine foothills listed on the Tropaeum Alpium or mentioned by Strabo and Ptolemy probably lived near the principal chain of the Alps, thus possibly leaving the northern part of Lower Bavaria to a large extent unpopulated during the early first century a.d.

The Illyrian customs stations {publicum portorium lllyrici) in Passau (Boiodurum) and Pfaffenhofen (Pons Aeni) were certainly established in the reign of Claudius. Further detailed information for early Raetian economic "and social history is not available, however, because the native population which certainly existed and which had mainly been an agricultural one, scarcely appears in our sources. In the attested setdements, which were about to take on some characteristics of urban centres, craft and trade certainly predominated. We hear but little of an upper stratum; especially noteworthy is the family of Claudius Paternus Clementianus from the vicinity of Epfach, whose parents received the Roman citizenship from Claudius (or possibly Nero) and who himself rose to procuratorships under Trajan or Hadrian.²³ For whatever reasons, we again have no evidence from the Alpine region and eastern Raetia for this social stratum.

Similarly we know scarcely anything of the political history of the province. In a.d. 14 the Suebi are supposed to have threatened the Alpine foothills and veterans of the rebellious German army were therefore sent against them.²⁴ In the year 69 the province was inevitably dragged into the struggles for power between Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian. The decision of the Raetian troops in favour of Vitellius and the Norican troops in favour of Otho and Vespasian was connected with the respective commitment of the German and Pannonian armies: until long into the second century the orientation of Raetia was to the West. For that reason in 69 the Raetian troops, including the local militia of the province, were instructed to attack the rebellious Helvetians²⁵ and were probably then removed to Italy. Later the Raetian and Norican troops found themselves facing each other across the Inn, though without

For another possible solution see Wolff 1986 (e 645) i66f.

Pflaum i960 (d 59) 150 bis (61). ²⁴ Tac. Ann. 1.44.4. ²⁵ Tac. Hisl. 1.67.2; 68.1-2.

coming to blows.²⁶ And after Vespasian's victory, when the Norican troops were moved to be deployed in the area of the Batavian revolt,²⁷ they may have destroyed the hostile Raedan camps as well as Augsburg, Kempten and Bregenz. At least, that is one conclusion which scholars have drawn from the existence of destruction levels at these sites. The reality may have been much more complicated but such uncertainty is characteristic of the politically marginal situation of this province, of which the historiographic tradition tells us hardly anything, except incidentally.

²⁴ Tac. Hist. 111.5.2. ²⁷ Tac. Hist, rv.70.2.

THE DANUBIAN AND BALKAN PROVINCES

J.J. WILKES

I. THE ADVANCE TO THE DANUBE AND BEYOND, 43 B.C.-A.D. 6

'Magnum est stare in Danubii ripa' proclaimed the Younger Pliny to the emperor Trajan. An approach to the river, either dilated in the plains or surging awesomely in one of its several gorges, rarely fails to stir the imagination. The river Danube figures in some of Europe's oldest myths, some from remote prehistory, such as the tale of the returning Argonauts sailing upstream from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. Throughout history conquerors and their armies have exulted at gaining the river, though perhaps none more emphatically than the emperor Augustus who boasted in his Res Gestae of the advance, achieved by his stepson and legate Tiberius Nero, of the boundaries of Illyricum to the bank of the Danube. Not until the middle course of the Danube had been secured could Rome hold and exploit the overland route between Italy and her eastern territories.¹ That remains today the principal land route

¹ Greek and Latin authors and inscriptions on stone are the principal sources for the Danube lands in the Julio-Claudian era. For the narrative of conquest Appian's lengthy description of the campaigns of 55-33 b.c., III. xiv—xxviii, is based direcdy on a memoir composed by Octavian. Velleius Paterculus' account, n.110-16, of the Pannonian uprising of a.d. 6-9 drew on his experiences as an officer on the staff of Tiberius for a part of that period, although his promised full- scale account of the conquest of Dalmatians and Pannonians (11.96.3) was, it appears, never completed. Save for a full description of the Danube campaigns of Licinius Crassus in 29-28 b.c., li.25.2-27, the Roman History of Cassius Dio furnishes little more than occasional summaries, often with the events of several years compressed into a few sentences, for example under 16 B.C., liv.20.1—5* The Lives of Suetonius, the Epitome of Livy's History, along with the works of later compilers such as Florus, Rufius Festus and Orosius, can furnish significant detail although, in the case of the latter, are just as likely to import confusion. For some periods the written record is seriously deficient, above all for the years 9 в.с. to a.d. 4, where some folios are missing from the MS of Cassius Dio while Velleius was not disposed to discuss military activities when his hero Tiberius was off the scene. From the accession of Tiberius the Annals of Tacitus provide valuable accounts of affairs in Thrace and among the Suebic Germans north of Pannonia, while the Histories record the Sarmatian attacks on Moesia during a.d. 69. Finally two contemporary writers also contribute to the record, albeit in a rather different manner. From his bleak exile in Tomis the poet Ovid furnishes a picture of life close to the lower Danube. The geographer Strabo provides valuable accounts of the indigenous population of the area, their history, habits and economy, in the course of which are many valuable references to recent Roman campaigns.

The evidence from inscriptions increases towards the end of the period. There is little for the wars of Augustus, save for passages in the Res Gestae and a few texts relating to the activities of his legates, for example ILS 918 and 8956. By the period of Claudius tbe numbers of military epitaphs in

545

Map 11. Military bases, cities and settlements in the Danubian provinces.

between Europe and the Middle East, via Zagreb, Belgrade, Niŝ, and Sofia to Istanbul, or south from Nis via Skopje and Thessalonica to Athens. For nearly four centuries this highway was the principal military axis of the Roman empire, notably in the recurrent episodes of civil war, from the turmoil of a.d. 68-9 which followed the end of the Julio- Claudians to the great conflicts of the fourth century which troubled the dynasties of Constantine and Valentinian. Theodosius I, the last to rule over a united Roman empire, was in a.d. j 94 the last reigning emperor to travel the overland route between East and West.²

The province of Pannonia, and within it above all the region of the lower Drava and Sava around Mursa and Sirmium, was the keystone of the empire's defensive arch against the northern peoples between the Black Sea and the northern Ocean. When that fell the interests of the eastern and western halves of the empire soon diverged. In the pact at Brundisium in 40 в.с. the Illyrian town of Scodra near the Adriatic had been designated to mark the boundary between Octavian's West and Antony's East.³ In reality the frontier was the near impassable mountain barrier of the north-south watershed through Bosnia, Montenegro and Albania. It became evident that these areas and their sturdy inhabitants could only be subdued by approaches from the encircling plains to the north, from the direction of Zagreb and Belgrade. That could not even be attempted until the overland route across the middle Danube basin had been secured. By the middle years of Augustus this had been achieved, a notable success for the new army recruited after Actium. Its

Noricum, Pannonia and Dalmatia, are sufficient to indicate the identities and locations of legions and auxiliary units, while the military production of stamped bricks and tiles appears to commence around the same time. The inscriptions from the Danube lands were first assembled by Th. Mommsen for volume hi of CIL, published in 1875 with supplements in 190a. This is now being supplemented and, for some provinces, superseded, by new collections. Inscriptions recorded from the former Yugoslavia between 1902 and 1970 are collected in the three volumes of ILIug, while those from Moesia Superior are currently being entirely republished (IMS). It is to be regretted that most of the modern collections tend to be defined by modern frontiers, for example Hungary (RIU), Bulgaria (IGBu/g), Greece (ILCR) and Romania (IDR and ISM). In the matter of coin evidence the presence of Roman issues among the hoards from the Danube lands is now well documented, as are the local Celtic, Dacian and Thracian issues. The function and significance of the latter have been much debated; for a recent discussion see Crawford 1985 (в jao) 119-39.

Archaeological investigations, most undertaken since the Second World War, have furnished evidence for the plans, principal buildings and adjoining cemeteries of several Roman cities, though many important discoveries have yet to be fully recorded and published. Many military sites along the Danube have also been examined, although the earliest levels of occupation are rarely penetrated. In recent years there has been a great deal of valuable work on the classification and distribution of important Roman pottery, including amphorae and terra sigillata table-ware, notably in the former Yugoslavia and Hungary, which has aided the location of garrisons and settlements of this period. As a rule the archaeological evidence consists of imports or products of Roman origin which owe little or nothing to indigenous traditions of the Danube lands. For many areas this seems to be a true reflection of the state of relations between the invaders, soldiers and settlers, and the native peoples throughout the Julio-Claudian era.

¹ Pliny, Рая. 18.i; RG 30.1. ³ App. BCiv. v.65.

strategic value was to be amply demonstrated when it held firm, though only just, during the rebellion of Pannonia in a.d. 6-9. While the deeds of Drusus, Germanicus and Arminius stirred the imagination of poets and panegyricists the truth was that in the reckoning Germany beyond the Rhine was expendable and was finally discarded in a.d. 15/16. Not so Illyricum and the Danube.

The Balkans witnessed the death-agony of the Roman Republic in the aftermath of Caesar's murder. The Senate granted command in Illyri­cum, Macedonia and Achaea, to Brutus, who delegated his authority to Q. Hortensius Hortalus, proconsul in Macedonia. Caesar's former lieutenant P. Vatinius ended his operations against the Delmatae around Narona and returned to Rome, where he celebrated an Illyrian triumph on 31 July 42 B.C. The republicans found allies among Illyrians and Thracians, although a rash attempt to march from northern Italy to Macedonia by Decimus Brutus met its inevitable end among the Iapodes. The pact at Brundisium in September 40 в.с. left Illyricum under Octavian and Macedonia under Antony. The latter ordered attacks on the Illyrian Parthini, the allies of Brutus, and the Dardani, a perpetual menace to Macedonia. For victories over the Parthini a triumph was awarded to Asinius Pollio but neither the commander nor the outcome of Antony's helium Dardanicum happen to be on record and may indeed have been suppressed by his rival.[674]

In the domain of Octavian the expansion of Dacia under Burebista had reawakened in Italy the old fear of invasion from the north east. It was no accident that the reported schemes of Philip V of Macedon to direct the ferocious Bastarnae overland against Italy figured prominendy in the history of Livy, a native of Patavium. Burebista was now dead and his realm divided between four or five rulers, most no more than shadows in the historical record, Comoiscus, Coson, Cotiso and Dicomes, the first three ruling in south-west Dacia, the last in the south east. The triumvir's belated victory over Sextus Pompeius at Naulochus on 3 September ₃6 B.C. was acclaimed far away among Roman settlers in Illyricum[675] but it was not to be long before that region became the scene of Roman campaigning. Caesar's heir devoted two full seasons of operations against peoples beyond the Adriatic (see p. 172), though for reasons largely unconnected with affairs in that quarter. In 35 в.с. a march through the Iapodes and Pannonians left a garrison of twenty-five cohorts at Siscia. There was some talk of an advance against the Dacians, and this may have been the occasion of a reported contact with Cotiso, which provoked Antony's subsequent alliance with Dicomes. In the next year the Delmatae were attacked and some hard fighting in the valleys and forests behind Salona won a capitulation and return of the standards captured from Caesar's luckless general A. Gabinius at Synodion in 48 B.C., though not before a winter blockade in 34/3 B.C. maintained by one of Caesar's leading field commanders. The register of surrendered peoples suggests that the entire coast and hinterland between Istria and Macedonia were now in Roman hands, though no advance had yet been made against the Pannonian peoples across the mountains, in the valleys of Bosnia, the Drava and the Sava.

For nearly twenty years following victory over the Delmatae, which furnished Octavian with the first instalment of his triple triumph on 13 August 29 B.C., almost nothing is reported of events in the Danube lands. The exception is Dio's unusually full record of the campaigns in 29 and 28 B.C. by M. Crassus, proconsul in Macedonia with an army of four legions. The first season saw victory over the Bastarnae near the Danube at the river Ciabrus (Cibrica), in which the proconsul killed King Deldo in personal combat. A triumph was decreed, though the title imperator was denied. Moreover, there are grounds for suspecting that Crassus' true achievement was a victory over the Dacians but that the record was later distorted to avoid embarrassing Octavian. The next year saw action in the northern Dobrudja which led to the recapture of Roman standards seized by the Bastarnae more than thirty years before from C. Antonius, Cicero's disreputable colleague in the consulship of 63 в.с. Back in Rome Crassus triumphed 'over Thrace and the Getae' on 4 July 27 в.с. but there was no display of recaptured standards, and a claim for the immensely prestigious spolia opima for his killing of the king was denied on a constitutional technicality.⁶

During this period the troubled affairs of the kingdom of Thrace drew Roman armies more than once into the area, a recurring pattern being conflict between the* Odrysae of the more setded east and the powerful Bessi of the mountainous west. Though the Sapaean Rhoemetalces (I) may have gained sole power in Thrace for his desertion of Antony before Actium, he was to prove an effective ruler, whose long and prosperous reign is reflected in a silver coinage minted to the standard of Roman

' Dio li. 25.2-27; cf. P/R²l i 86, with Mocsy 1966 (c 289) 511. The Dacian prisoners who fought with Germans in the arena at Rome a few days after Octavian's triumph, Dio li. 22.6-9, tnay have been supplied by Crassus' victory over the army of Cotiso, Hor. Carm. 111.8. On the affair of the spolia opima see Syme 1959 (a 95) 308-9.

denarii.⁷ The affair of M. Primus, the governor of Macedonia accused of making war against the Odrysae, reported by Cassius Dio under 22 B.C., remains no less obscure in its Balkan context than it is in politics at Rome. We are on firmer ground with the activities of the consular M. Lollius, whose intervention on behalf of Rhoemetalces, perhaps in 19/18 в.с., may have been the occasion for the transfer of the Macedonian army to the new command of'Thrace and Macedonia'. Lollius' successor may have been L. Tarius Rufus, the consul of 16 B.C., who fought with the Sarmatians, the first reported collision with these Iranian horsemen.⁸ The Balkan command may also have been entrusted to Tiberius following his Alpine campaign in 15 B.C., for operations which brought the Scordisci around Sirmium into a Roman alliance that was to prove crucial in the subsequent conquest of the Pannonians. It is possible that the engagement of the Balkan armies in the far north west caused the task of crushing a major uprising by the Thracian Bessi to be assigned to L. Piso with an army from the East. The bloody Thracian war lasted three years, probably 12-10 B.C., during which the Romans recovered from defeat to gain a victory which rewarded the commander with triumphal honours.

Illyricum, not among the territories assigned to Caesar Augustus in 27 в.с., will presumably have been administered by proconsuls, though none happens to be recorded. Dio's summary of recent events under 16 в.с. refers to the operations of P. Silius Nerva against peoples of the eastern Alps, in the course of which his legates repelled an attack on Istria by Noricans and Pannonians. The province of Silius was not, it seems, Illyricum but rather Transpadana which included Istria and Liburnia. In the same passage Dio refers to an uprising in Dalmatia that was soon dealt with, presumably by a proconsul. The overland connex­ion between Italy and the Balkans was achieved by Tiberius in the Bellum Pannonicum (see p. 175-6) when, building on the achievements of M. Vinicius and M. Agrippa in 14-15 B.C., he overcame the Breuci of the Sava valley with help from the Scordisci in 12 в.с. Four more seasons of warfare, under Tiberius in 11—9 в.с. and Sextus Appuleius in 8 B.C., completed the conquest south of the Drava and advanced the boundary of Illyricum to the Danube. The defeated Pannonians were disarmed and the young men of military age deported to the slave markets of Italy. A triumph was voted to the general but only the honour was permitted. Thus, according to a contemporary, was ended a 'rebellion of the

⁷ On the identities and relationships of the rulers of Thrace, see Sullivan 1979 (e 698). The numbering of rulers follows that in the entries of U. Kahrstedt in RE, ia, 2; j-7, 1003-4.

• Dio Liv.20.3. The reading of an inscription recording construction of a bridge over the Strymon at Amphipolis, AE 1936, 18 = /LGR 230, is not sufficiently clear to determine whether Tarius Rufus was proconsul or legate.

Dalmatians' that had lasted for more than 220 years, reckoning, that is, from Rome's first Illyrian war in 229 в.с.[676]

The conquest of Pannonia, along with the takeover of Noricum which evidently followed the operations of Silius (see above), brought control of the Drava and Sava valleys that enabled the Romans to dictate the fortunes of most peoples in the middle Danube basin. How that power was exploited is not reported, since the historical record for the middle years of Augustus is seriously deficient, though the Dacians come again into prominence. Late in 10 в.с. a raid across the frozen Danube had frustrated an intention to close the temple of Janus, and the Roman response may have been the operations of Cornelius Lentulus, perhaps successor to Piso in the Balkan command, against Dacians, the same group who surrendered to Crassus in 29 B.C., and their Sarmadan mercenaries. Lentulus' successor may have been the unknown general (though likely to have been M. Vinicius) whose activities beyond the lower Danube involved the Bastarnae and contacts, not necessarily hosdle, with lesser peoples to the west of Dacia.[677] The scale and direction of these operations suggest considerable confidence on the part of the Romans towards their new Danubian conquests, which is also reflected in the appointment c. 1 в.с. of the princeps' eldest grandson to command 'the legions on the Ister', where 'he fought no war, not because no war broke out, but because he was learning to rule in peace and security'.¹¹ Though the Dacians were to prove troublesome again in a.d. 6, Augustus felt entitled to claim a major victory over them, first by the defeat of an invasion with heavy casualties, then by a counter-offensive which brought a surrender. According to Strabo, the Dacians were on the point of submitting but still held out in the hope of help from the Germans.[678] In this quarter Domitius Ahenobarbus, in the course of a march from the Danube to the Elbe in this period, settled the friendly Hermunduri on the west of the formidable Marcomanni, who them­selves had recently migrated to Bohemia, where they appeared to threaten the Roman hold on the upper Danube.[679]

What is reported of the activities of Roman commanders in the Balkans implies a control of the lower Danube that may, from time to time, may have been extended through use of the fleet to the Black Sea. At Callatis, a Greek city of that region which had been a Roman ally for more than half a century, the praetorian legate P. Vinicius, under whom the historian Velleius Paterculus served as tribune, is named on an honorific inscription.¹⁴ Both the Romans and their allies will have been aware of the movements of new peoples, caused by turmoil in remote Asia, westwards across the Pontic steppes and into the plains beyond the lower Danube. There had already been conflict with Sarmatians, steadily roaming westwards, on at least two occasions. Some peoples pressed up hard against Roman territory were evidendy begging admission, to which a response could be postponed, though not indefinitely. Late under Augustus Strabo records that Sex. Aelius Catus allowed 50,000 Getae to cross the river and settle in Roman territory.¹⁵

In the mean time the later years of Augustus' Principate were marred by misfortunes, none worse than the rebellion of the Pannonians.

ii. rebellion in illyricum and the annexation of thrace (a.d. 6-69)

When the warriors of the Daesitiates and other Pannonians had assembled in a.d. 6 for the expedition against Maroboduus they were minded instead to turn their arms against the Romans (p. 176-8). Led by Bato of the Daesitiates and Bato of the Breuci they attacked Roman settlements, the colonies on the Adriatic and even penetrated to Macedonia. Sirmium near the mouth of the Sava, the key to the middle Danube, was saved by the Balkan army and the Thracian cavalry under Rhoemetalces, while in the west the army of Illyricum held fast at Siscia. There in the following year the two armies were briefly united and were directed in concert by Tiberius until the Pannonians surrendered at the river Bathinus (Bosna?) on 3 August a.d. 8. In the next season the Pannonians between the Sava and the Adriatic, including the Daesitiates and Pirustae, were attacked until the surrender of Bato at Andetrium (Muĉ), near Salona in the territory of the Delmatae, brought the terrible war finally to an end. Tiberius, back in Rome at the beginning of a.d. 10, was soon called to the Rhine by the disaster of Varus and the Illyrian triumph was postponed until 23 October a.d. 12. The celebration of victory, marked by salutations as imperator, triumphal honours for the army commanders, and the erection of triumphal arches in Illyricum, cannot have concealed the real cost of 'the most serious of all foreign wars since the Punic', when 'ever so many legions were maintained but

¹⁴ The Callatis treaty, ILLRP 516, is generally assigned to 72/1 B.C. For Vinicius at Callatis see AE i960, 378 with Syme 1971 (e 702) 68-9, and 1979 (a 94) 11 133. ¹⁵ Strab. vn.3.10 (305Q.

very little booty taken'.¹⁶ Less than two years after his triumph Tiberius was again in Illyricum, though he had barely arrived when news of Augustus' final illness drew him back to Italy.

For long after the Pannonian revolt the provinces of Pannonia and Dalmada, formed by a division of Illyricum probably in a.d. 9, were placed in the charge of senior consulars. The fighting had caused the loyalty of the legions to be strained until, on hearing news of the death of Augustus (19 August a.d. 14), the army of Pannonia mutinied. The legions demanded better and more speedy reward for what they had endured in the recent wars. Even the appearance on the scene of Drusus, the son of Tiberius, did not bring an end to the disorder until a lunar eclipse in the early hours of 27 September, followed by a break in the weather, undermined the morale of the rebels and impaired their mobility. Drusus on his return to Rome was praised for his resolute conduct, though, observes Tacitus, the concessions made by Germani­cus to the mutineers on the Rhine were extended to the army of Pannonia.¹⁷

Three years later the attendon of Romans in Illyricum, in which the direction of affairs had been assigned to Drusus, was diverted to turmoil among the Suebic Germans, where the long supremacy of Maroboduus among the Marcomanni was coming to an end. Challenged first by the great Arminius in A.d. 17 he was expelled the following year by his kinsman Catualda and accepted an exile at Ravenna where he lived on for eighteen years. The followers of Maroboduus and also of Catualda, who was himself speedily removed by the Hermunduri and consigned by the Romans to an exile at Forum Iulii in Gaul, were settled beyond the Danube between the rivers Marus (March) and Cusus (perhaps the Vah) in southern Slovakia. Here they became subjects of Vannius, whose thirty-year reign over the Suebic Quadi gave the Romans a generadon of peace in this quarter. It may have been around this time that the Romans permitted the Sarmatian Jazyges to occupy the plains between Pannonia and Dacia, though their presence is not recorded undl a.d. 5 o, in the service of Vannius (see below). On 28 May a.d. 20 Drusus celebrated the award of an ovadon granted in the previous summer for the recepdon of Maroboduus and other achievements. Only a renewal of strife among the Thracians now disturbed the pax romana in the Danube lands.¹⁸

¹⁶ Suet. Tib. 16; Dio Lvi.16.4. The victory of Tiberius is the likely subject of the 'Gemma Augustea' now in Vienna, Bianchi Bandinelli 1970 (f 27;) 19;. Among the defeated peoples represented in the recently excavated Sebasteion at Aphrodisias were the Pannonian Andizetes and Pirustae. Other Danubians include the Bessi, Dacians, Dardanians and Iapodes; see Smith 1987 (f 580)96. " Tac. Ann. 1.16-30.

¹⁸ Tac. Ann. 11.44-6; jj; 62-3; 111.2; 19; 56. The presence of Drusus is commemorated in the dedication of an exercise ground on the Dalmatian island Issa (Vis) in a.d. 20, lLIug 257. Mocsy 1977 (e 678) 439, cites the victory over Sarmatians credited to Tiberius in a.d. 7 by the Euscbius- Hieronymus Chronicle (p. 170 Helm) as a possible context for the setdement of the Jazyges.

The role of Roman forces in the region of the Danube delta, beyond the presumed formal limits of Roman territory, is described in the Tristia and the betters from Pontus from Ovid's nine-year exile (a.d. 9-17) at Tomis. Life was hard and the barbarians were always close at hand. A poem of a.d. 16 thanks the emperor's legate Flaccus for gaining the loyalty of the Moesians and keeping out the Getae. In a.d. i 2 the latter had seized the fortress at Aegis(s)us (Tulcea) and raided as far as Tomis. A Thracian column came to the scene, and a Roman expedition came down river to recover the fortress. The conduct of the chief centurion (Iulius) Vestalis, an Alpine prince and perhaps a descendant of King Donnus, is singled out for praise. Another poem describes a similar episode involving the fortress at Troesmis (Igliĵa), recaptured by the legate Flaccus after a fight.¹⁹ Further south in Thrace a division of the kingdom following the death of Rhoemetalces (I) around a.d. 12 brought a renewal of strife. After the death of Augustus, Cotys (VIII), the son of the late king who had been awarded the more favoured east, was threatened by his uncle Rhescuporis (III) in control of the rougher and more backward west. In a.d. i 8 Tiberius sent a warning but when Cotys was seized and killed his uncle was brought to Rome and accused before the Senate by Antonia Tryphaena, widow of Cotys and a descendant of Mithridates and Antony. Rhescuporis was exiled to Alexandria, where he was later killed 'in an attempt to escape, genuine or not'. The kingdom was assigned to his son Rhoemetalces (II) and the children of the murdered Cotys, for whom the ex-praetor Trebellenus Rufus acted as regent. In connexion with the same affair it is reported that a leading Roman from Macedonia was charged with a treasonable association with Rhescuporis and that his island banishment was stipulated as having to be 'inaccessible from Macedonia or Thrace'. The Romans intervened again in a.d. 21, when Rhoemetalces was besieged in Philippopolis, and then in a.d. 26 to put down a rebellion in the Haemus mountains provoked by conscription to the Roman army. For his services in this campaign, which earned triumphal honours for the Roman commander, the king may have been rewarded with Roman citizenship and the title rex. His reign was evidently over when Caligula confirmed Rhoemetalces (III), son of Cotys (VIII) and Antonia Try­phaena, in the realm of his father. His close association and distant kinship with the emperor was advertised on dedications at Cyzicus, across the Hellespont from Thrace, where the family had resided since the death of Cotys in a.d. 19.²⁰

In a.d. 44 the unified Balkan command of Moesia, Macedonia and

» Ov. Роя/. 1.8, iv.7. On Vestalis see P1R² J 621.

» Tac. Am. 11.64-7 (fall of Rhescuporis), 111.38-9 (a.d. 21), iv.47-j 1 (a.d. 26). IGRR 4, 145-6 and 147 (Cyzicus), on which see Sullivan 1979 (e 698) 200-4.

Achaea, formed at the beginning of Tiberius' reign, was broken up. The latter two were returned to the charge of proconsuls appointed by the Senate, while Moesia was formally constituted a province under a consular legate.[680] The new arrangement was evidently bound up with the annexation of Thrace following the murder of Rhoemetalces (III). The takeover, which met with a degree of resistance requiring the presence of the legions, was directed by A. Didius Gallus, first governor of Moesia. His activides also embraced the Crimea, where the kingdom of the Bosporus had long-standing connexions with Thrace. In his first year Claudius had revoked Caligula's award of the Bosporus to Polemo of Pontus, son of Antonia Tryphaena, and confirmed the authority of Mithridates, stepson of Gepaepyris the widow of King Aspurgus (died c. a.d. 37/8). The new king's over-assertive policies brought his replace­ment by his half-brother Cotys whose coins commence in a.d. 46/5 (342 of the local era), when he was installed by an expedition under Didius Gallus. The attempt by Mithridates to recover his kingdom was defeated by a Roman prefect in charge of some auxiliary cohorts stationed in the Bosporus, aided by the Sarmatian Aorsi, who roamed the plains between the Tanais (Don) and the Caspian. The deposed king was consigned to an exile in Italy until executed by Galba on suspicion of plotting. Though the army of Moesia took part, it seems that the Roman interest in this quarter was directed from Pontus in Asia Minor rather than from the lower Danube.[681]

The affairs of Pannonia and Dalmatia after a.d. 9 present a notable contrast to those of Moesia and Thrace. The hold on the Danube was now secure and there is no record of trouble among the Pannonians. During the Principate of Tiberius their governors were senior consulars, retained in office for exceptional terms. The tenure of the Balkan command by C. Poppaeus Sabinus was ended only by his death after twenty-three years, and his successor Memmius Regulus remained for a decade. L. Munatius Plancus held Pannonia for seventeen years, while Dalmatia knew only two governors, P. Cornelius Dolabella until a.d. 20 and L. Volusius Saturninus. The extent of Roman confidence towards the area is indicated by the transfer of a legion from Pannonia to Africa for the campaign against Tacfarinas in a.d. 20—4, and by the permanent removal, without replacement, of the same legion IX Hispana for the expedition to Britain in a.d. 43. An attempted rebellion by the governor of Dalmatia in a.d. 42 ended after five days when the legions returned to their allegiance and a grateful Claudius rewarded them (VII and XI) with the titles 'loyal and faithful' (Claudia pia fide/is).²³ Otherwise the only event of note in the area was the fall of Vannius, whose long reign among the Suebi beyond the Danube (see above) came to an end with civil war. In a.d. 50 the Romans refused aid to the dissidents but offered Vannius a refuge, while the Roman governor was ordered to secure the Danube bank with legions and auxiliaries 'to provide help for the defeated and to overawe the victors'. After the royal cavalry of the Sarmadan Jazyges had provoked a disastrous fight with the Lugii, the king was rescued by a Roman fleet, and his followers were setded in Pannonia. The kingdom was divided between his nephews Sido and Italicus — 'once popular when winning power they were even more strongly detested after they had gained it'.[682] The Romans paid close attendon to dynasdc struggles among their German neighbours for they realized that once matters had been resolved there was a prospect of peace and stability for a generadon.

The middle and later years of Nero saw a storm gathering on the lower Danube. An unusually full record of the activides of a governor of Moesia from around this dme tells how 'he brought across, with the object of keeping up the payment of tribute, more than 100,000 of Transdanubian peoples, along with wives and families, chiefs or kings'. 'He nipped in the bud a growing threat from among the Sarmadans, even though he had sent the greater part of his army for the expedition into Armenia.' 'Kings hitherto unknown or hostile to the Roman people he brought to the river bank to pay solemn respect to the Roman standards. To the kings of the Bastarnae and Roxolani he restored their sons and to the king of the Dacians his brothers, whom he had either captured or rescued from enemies; from other rulers he received hostages. By these measures he strengthened and extended the security of the province.' He was busy also in the Crimea: 'he pushed back the kings of the Scythians from a blockade of Chersonesus (near Sevasto­pol), which lies beyond the river Borysthenes (Dniepr). Finally, 'he was the first to obtain from the province a large quantity of wheat for the grain supply of the Roman people'. For these achievements Ti. Plautius Silvanus Aelianus was not awarded triumphal honours until years later under Vespasian, though it came then with marks of special favour. Moreover, by that time disasters suffered by the Romans on the lower Danube will likely have served to cast a more favourable light on what appear to have been largely diplomatic comings and goings.[683]

The reported schemes of Nero's later years in the direction of the

Black Sea, involving annexation of Bosporus and Pontus and the raising of a new legion for an expedition to the Caucasus, may have been in part a response to an increasing threat from the Sarmadans and other Iranians. Rebellion within the empire brought them to an end and when the Sarmadans attacked the Roman world was on the point of being engulfed by civil war. In the winter a.d. 67/8 the Roxolani had cut to pieces two auxiliary cohorts and in the following winter they crossed the river for a raid on Moesia. A sudden thaw put the Sarmatian horsemen at a disadvantage when attacked by a legion and its auxiliaries, and a victory had been reported to Rome by 1 March a.d. 69, for which the emperor Otho made generous awards to all concerned.[684] A second attack later that year found the province almost devoid of troops, and even the legionary bases were in danger until the dmely appearance of Mucianus and the eastern legions on their march to Italy. Legion VI Ferrata was diverted to deal with the invaders, who were Sarmadans rather than Dacians, since it was for victory over the former that triumphal honours were later awarded to Mucianus.[685] During the following winter, with Moesia evidently still disorganized after the civil war, the Sarmadans came again, killed the governor and ransacked the province from end to end. A new governor could do no more than chase off a few stragglers.[686]Now there began a comprehensive reorganization of the defences of Moesia which marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the Roman Danube.

iii. the danube peoples

Within little more than a generation a large tract of the Danube lands, extending across the north of the Balkan peninsula, had been added to the Roman empire. Control of the river Danube, achieved first through the conquest of the Pannonians and extended through the annexadon of Thrace, gave to Rome the means of encircling and securing the mountain ranges, some rising to over 2,500m, and the dense forests that covered most of the Balkans. In the east the lower basin of the Danube is defined by a semicircular chain of mountains formed by the southern Carpathians and the Stara Planina, through which the river forces its way out of the Hungarian plain, once a great inland sea. In the west the undulating plain of Pannonia, to the west of the Danube, is bounded on the south by the rivers Drava and Sava. Further south the Dinaric watershed and several ranges run mainly from north west to south east, parallel with the Adriadc coast, and continue south through Montene­gro and Albania and the Pindus range of Greece. The south east is dominated by the mass of the Rhodope mountains that extend across the central Balkans, throwing out spurs towards the Black Sea and the Aegean. Most of this area and its peoples could only be approached and controlled from the direction of the Danube via its major tributaries.

Europe's greatest river flows more than 2,800km from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. Since Roman times the Danube has rarely served as a political frontier, save for that between Bulgaria and Romania in modern times. That has rather been the role of several major tributaries, while the great river has been more the highway for movement across Europe. In the upper and lower basins, bounded by Alps, Carpathians and the Balkan mountains, the south bank tends to be higher, sometimes with cliffs where ranges of low hills meet the river. The north bank is generally lower, marshy and hard to approach, save when ice covers both marshes and river between January and March. Below Belgrade passage between the upper and lower basins is obstructed by a succession of gorges for nearly 130km, formed by the southward continuation of the Carpathians. Fast currents, rocks and whirlpools combine to form such a barrier that in antiquity the upper and lower courses of the Danube were treated virtually as separate rivers. The lower gorge (Donja Klisura), where the river narrows to 150m in the Kazan defile, is more difficult than the upper (Gornja Klisura). A distance of 5 km downstream from the gorge comes the great barrier of the Iron Gate (Prigrada), where a wall of rock across the bed of the river blocks any form of passage. Here a stretch of 5 km, where the river boils through shoals and cataracts, was eventually bypassed with a canal in the year of Trajan's first invasion of Dacia,²⁹ a precedent imitated by Austro- Hungarian engineers at the end of the last century. The decision to hold to the river after a.d. 9 was to make permanent an occupation of the great plains along the upper and middle Danube. Later, when the river had become a fortified line of defence, it was in the lowlands of Pannonia and Moesia that the empire was vulnerable to sudden invasion, especially when the river was bridged with ice.

The indigenous peoples of the Danube lands at the time of the Roman conquest fall into four groups, whose languages all belonged to the Indo-European family.³⁰ These were Celts in the north west, Illyrians in the west, and Dacians and Thracians in the east, respectively north and south of the Danube. The brief comments regarding their social organization and material culture to be found in the ancient sources can be supplemented by epigraphic and archaeological discoveries. Inscrip­tions of the Roman period have been the basis for the study of personal names, family structures ^nd other groupings. The Thracians were

²⁹ Saŝel 1973 (e 692). ³⁰ Polome 1982 (e 687).

Map Geography and native peoples of the Danubian provinces.

believed to be the oldest stratum of the population and once appear to have extended west as far as the Adriatic, though in historical dmes they were bounded by the lower Danube, the Black Sea and Aegean coasts and, on the west, by the river Strymon. In the west of their territory dwelt the Dentheletae and Maidi in the Strymon valley, also the formidable Bessi of the western plain and the Rhodope mountains. In the more fertile and settled east were the Asti and Odrysae, from whom originated the ruling dynasties of Thrace. North of the Haemus mountains (Stara Planina) dwelt the associated Moesi and Triballi in the west and, east of the river Utus, the Getae of the Dobrudja, who were akin to the Dacians. Thracians dwelt in fortified villages and hill forts. In earlier times they had imported fine metalwork and pottery which was consigned in large amounts to their burials in mounds (tumult), of which more than 15,000 have been recorded. The rule of Macedon in the fourth century в.с. introduced urban life to the Thracians but signalled a general decline in material fortunes, hastened later as hellenistic kings competed to exploit their lands.[687]

On the west of the Thracians, and bounded in the central Balkans more or less by the valley of the Morova, lay the Illyrians. That name had once been applied simply to the immediate neighbours of Epirus and Macedonia but was later extended to include Delmatae, Liburnians, Iapodes, Pannonians and others. Epitaphs of the Roman period found in Albania, Yugoslavia and Hungary, have permitted the identification of distinct groups among the Illyrians, notably the Illyrians 'properly so- called', as the Elder Pliny described them, dwelling in northern Albania, the Delmatae and associated peoples of the middle Adriatic, the Pannonians of Bosnia and the Sava and Drava valleys, the Iapodes, and the Liburnians around the northern Adriatic.[688]

'The Dacians and the Getae speak the same language' notes Strabo.[689]Some ancient writers clearly confused the two peoples, until the Dacian regime of Burebista rose in the first century в.с. to dominate the Danube lands. In the west the once powerful Celdc Boii and Taurisci were humbled and on the east the Black Sea ciues from Olbia to Apollonia came under Dacian influence. The dictator Caesar is said to have planned an expedition to Dacia though the death of Burebista, which occurred around the same time as Caesar's, saw his kingdom soon broken up between four or five rulers. In material culture the Dacians moved ahead of the other Danubian peoples, as Celdc influences stimulated a natural talent for metalworking in a land exceptionally rich in minerals. Long familiar with imported goods from the hellenistic and Roman worlds, jewellery, pottery, wine and oil, their commerce with the latter may also have involved slave-trading on a large scale, for which large quanddes of Roman coins reached the area around the middle of the first century в.с.³⁴

Celdc peoples had moved into the middle Danube basin during the fourth century в.с. They were soon in conflict with Illyrians and early in the third century they reached the southern Balkans, on one famous occasion (279 B.C.) all but destroying the kingdom of Macedon. Later they dispersed, some bands moving to Asia, others returning north to settlements near the Danube.[690] Survivals of the Celtic migradons included the Scordisci around the lower Sava, who were prominent in the middle Balkans during the late second and early first centuries B.C. Settlements of Celts are suggested by place names apparently of Celtic origin on the lower Danube, such as Ratiaria, Durostorum and Novio- dunum. Celts remained dominant along the middle Danube, in Noricum and in Pannonia, where remnants of the Boii and the Eravisci are found separated by the Illyrian Azali, the latter perhaps transported there during the Bellum Pannonicum of 14-9 в.с. Generally Celtic influence was widespread in the western Balkans, notably in weapons and other metalwork. The nature of their influence is indicated by Strabo's comment on the Iapodes: 'their armour is Celtic, they are tattooed like the rest of the Illyrians and Thracians'.[691]

Not a great deal is known of the economy, social organization and material culture of the majority of the Danube peoples, although it is now possible, in some measure, to put forward the necessary correcdve to unflattering stereotypes in the ancient sources, 'ignorance' of agricul­ture and viticulture, 'intemperance' in drinking and sexual behaviour and 'uncivilized conduct' among themselves and towards foreigners. In several areas more is now known of the layout and general character of settlements. In the south, among the Illyrians, Greek influence is evident in the fortified settlements of the Illyrian kingdom, at Lissus, Scodra and elsewhere.[692] The centre of the Illyrian Daorsi at Oŝaniĉi near Stolac possessed walls and towers reminiscent of Greek work.³⁸ Along the Adriatic coast from Istria southwards are found the remains of many fortified hill-settlements, the so-called castellieri of Istria and gradina of Dalmada. Among the Delmatae the settlement of the Riditae at Danilo near Ŝibenik is noteworthy for the many Latin inscriptions containing native names, many apparently from the period before a municipium was instituted under the Flavians.³⁹ Many settlements of this type lasted well into the Roman period, dominated by native families whose members often describe themselves as princeps castelli, 'chief of the fortress'.[693]

Among the Iapodes, some of the hill-settlements in the northern Lika attacked by the Romans in 35 в.с. have been identified, notably Monetium, Avendo and Arupium, and excavated; further east, in the Una valley around Bihaĉ, some large cemeteries, most of cremations, have been explored. Their grave goods include tradidonal types of pottery, weapons, brooches and jewellery dating from early Iron Age to Roman times. Unique to the area are the dozen or so stone cremation chests, suggesting some Etruscan or Italic influence, with an incised decoradon of warriors, horsemen, funeral processions and dances, in a style that shows little classical influence, although some are clearly of Roman date since they bear also Latin epitaphs.[694] The influence of seaborne contacts with other peoples is evident in the material culture of the Liburnians, notably in the extensive cemeteries excavated around Zadar and Nin. The Liburnian settlement at Radovine had stone houses built to a regular plan, imported Greek and hellenistic pottery and dry- stone, later mortared defences, and remained inhabited throughout the Roman era.[695] Several of the larger Liburnian hill-settlements were transformed into Roman towns when city institutions were introduced in the Julio-Claudian period.

The warrior-led Celts in the Danube lands are identified with the spread of fortified settlements (oppida) and by cemeteries which contain metal weapons, helmets, armour and ornaments often of remarkable quality. At Tolmin in Slovenia have been discovered the dressed stone footings of pre-Roman houses.⁴³ At the summit of the Magdalensberg in Carinthia was an oppidum, built c. 100 B.C., with a stone-faced double rampart {murus duplex).⁴⁴ The oppidum of the Eravisci in Pannonia was on the Gellert hill overlooking the Danube at Budapest and continued to be occupied well into Roman times, as the settlement spread down the slopes towards the river. From here were circulated, possibly down to Augustan times, the Eraviscan 'denarii' that imitated Roman republican issues.⁴⁵ In Dacia recent excavations have revealed much of the history and character of the citadels in the Ora§tie mountains of south-west Transylvania where the regimes of both Burebista and Decebalus were centred. The earliest of these appears to have been Costejti, which occupies a hill (561m) commanding the exit of the river Ара northwards from the mountains. The earliest phases of other citadels, Blidarul, Virful lui Hulpe, Piatra Ro§ie, Banita and Capilna, may also be dated before the end of the first century B.C., if not to the period of Burebista. At the centre lay the great complex of the Gradi§tea Muncel, consisting of a large fortress and the major shrine, which has been identified as the Dacian capital Sarmizegetusa. Most of what has been found there is dated to the era of Decebalus, c. a.d. 80 to 105, but the place was already a major shrine in the time of Burebista, where sanctuaries consisted of rows of timber columns set on circular bases of andesite to represent groves for the hanging of offerings to the gods.[696]

iv. provinces and armies

By early in the reign of Claudius the Danube land§ had been organized into five provinces. The core consisted of the three great commands of Pannonia, Dalmatia and Moesia, each in the charge of a consular legate and with armies totalling seven legions along with their equivalent auxiliaries.[697] In the north west and south east lay the smaller provinces of Noricum and Thracia, once ruled by native dynasties but now in the charge of procuratorial governors.

Noricum lay astride the Tauern Alps of Lower Austria, between the upper Drava and the Danube, and was bounded on the west by the river Inn.[698] Though narrow gorges make travel difficult in several places, some broad valleys are inviting for settlement, notably the Drau (Drava) and the Zollfeld around Klagenfuhrt, the Mur around Graz and, north of the watershed, the Traun around Wels. The main route into Noricum from Italy crossed the Saifnitz saddle (812m) into Carinthia and continued north to the Danube via Neumarkt, Ovilava (Wels) and Lauriacum. A branch fropi the road heading for the Brenner Pass entered Noricum from the west via the Eisacktal and the Pustertal, while that from the south crossed the Karavanken by the Loibl (Lubelj) Pass. Routes along the Mur and Drava valleys led to the main Pannonian Highway at Poetovio (Ptuj) on the Drava. Though a seasonal route crossed the High Tauern via the Hochtor (2,5 00m) the principal crossing was via the Katschberg (In Alpe, 1,740m), Radstadt and Lueg Passes, between Teurnia and Iuvavum (Salzburg). North of the mountains the main west to east road led from Iuvavum, Ovilava, Lauriacum and Cetium to Vindobona (Vienna) across the border in Pannonia.

The boundary between Noricum and Pannonia down the east side of the Alps left in Pannonia territory that had once been reckoned part of Noricum, including most of the Pannonian Highway (part of the 'Amber Road' of prehistoric times) between Aquileia and the Danube via Emona, Celeia, Poetovio, Savaria and Carnuntum. The boundary between Pannonia and Dalmada along the south edge of the Sava valley probably went back to a strategic division of command in Illyricum following the Pannonian surrender in the late summer of a.d. 8.[699] The long course of the Danube through the Hungarian plains marked the northern and eastern limits of Pannonia, between Vindobona and Singidunum (Belgrade) where Moesia began at the mouth of the Sava. In terrain, climate and material culture there were differences between Pannonia north and south of the Drava. The former was largely a continuation of the Great Hungarian plain, with some more favoured areas near Lake Balaton, in the Bakony hills nearer the Danube bend and around Pecs in the south east. In the south the overland routes between Italy and the Balkans branched off the Pannonian Highway at Emona and Poetovio to follow the broad and fertile valleys of the Sava and Drava. Further north the two principal routes across northern Pannonia led from Poetovio to Aquincum (Budapest) via Balaton, and from Savaria along the Arabo (Raab) to Arrabona (Gyor). There was at this period no road along the Danube bank in Noricum or Pannonia.

The greater part of the southern boundary of Moesia followed the northern foothills of the Haemus.[700] Though a towpath was constructed at least through the upper part of the Danube gorge by the Moesian legions under Tiberius,[701] there is no evidence at this time for a unified route along the Danube between Radaria (Archar) and Aegyssus at the apex of the delta. The most direct approach from the south to the centre of the province, that is 'Moesia et Triballia' around Ratiaria and Oescus, followed the Strymon (Struma) valley to Serdica and the Iskur valley to Oescus. A longer and more difficult route followed the Axius (Vardar) and Margus (Morava), via Scupi and Naissus, and then the Timacus (Timok) to the Danube near Ratiaria.

Though an 'unarmed province' before the end of the first century a.d. Dalmada embraced a great tract of forests and mountains which had seen hard fighting during the Augustan conquest.⁵² In the south the waterless and bare limestone karst of the hinterland makes a contrast with the coast and islands, almost everywhere green with Mediterranean vegetation.

From the Julian Alps in the north to the valley of the Drin in the south routes to the interior are uniformly difficult. Beyond the watershed of the Dinaric ranges the Bosnian rivers flow north to the Sava, from east to west the Glina, Colapis (Kulpa), Una, Sana, Vrbas, Bosna and Drina. Hardly a single trace of Roman influence can be observed in this area during the Julio-Claudian period, though Roman forces crossed and re- crossed it as military roads were driven across the land.

Most of what may be termed provincial administration in the Danube lands under the Julio-Claudians was intended to secure military ends, the conquest, pacification and exploitation of native peoples, and the security and support of the occupying armies. Until 27 в.с. Illyricum and Macedonia (which also included Achaea) were administered by procon­suls chosen from ex-praetors or ex-consuls. After that date Macedonia, which included Epirus and Thessaly, and Achaea were constituted separate provinces, each under a proconsul of praetorian rank, residing normally at Thessalonica and Corinth respectively. Illyricum, also proconsular, may not have extended north of the river Titus (Krka), leaving Liburnia still grouped along with Istria and Transpadana. Even when later part of Dalmatia, Liburnia retained its separate organization for the imperial cult.⁵³

As for the arrangements in Thrace, Macedonia and Moesia, the view here accepted is that after more than one Thracian crisis a new Balkan command was constituted with the legions of Macedonia, perhaps by M. Lollius in c. 19/18 B.C. (see above, p. 5 51), and perhaps titled 'Thracia Macedoniaque'. It may be presumed, though there is no proof, that Macedonia was subsequendy restored to administration by proconsuls, though no longer with undefined military responsibilities. In a.d. i 5 Macedonia and Achaea, having suffered many burdens during the recent wars, were added to the emperor's Balkan command, which by now may have been known as 'Moesia' or 'Moesia et Treballia' to assist recovery from the effects of those wars. This arrangement continued until a.d. 44 when Moesia was constituted a separate province and Macedonia and Achaea were returned to their proconsuls.⁵⁴ Newly annexed Thrace was placed in the charge of a procurator, a form of administration evidently favoured by Claudius for former client kingdoms. The Roman governor resided on the coast at Perinthus, rather than inland at the former capital Bizye, but the royal system of administration by districts was retained. The Thracian Chersonese (Gallipoli), an imperial possession since 12

" CIL in 2810 (Scardona): 'sacer(dos) ad aram Lib[bum(iae)]'; cf. in 2802 with 9877 (later lost and republished, AE 1938,68), a dedication to Nero, son of Germanicus (d. a.d. j 1). The provincial cult for Dalmatia was centred first at Epidaurum, CIL111 1741, then later at Doclea, CIL 111 1269)

Cf. p. 22J3.

⁵⁴ Veil. Pat. 11.101.3; "Гас. АпплЛо; Dio Lv.29.3; ILS 1349. It is to be noted that the sources for the history of Moesia before Claudian times are incomplete and tend to be anachronistic.

B.C., retained its separate administration, while Byzantium was included in the Asian province Bithynia. Not long after the annexation of Thrace that city appealed successfully for a remission of taxes in recognition of its contribution to the Roman war effort. A similar regime was introduced for Noricum, with a procuratorial administration based at the new city of Virunum in the Zollfeld.[702]

In several areas military conquest was, in typical Roman fashion, followed up by driving new roads though areas of mountain and forest. The Via Claudia Augusta across the eastern Alps via the Resia Pass was completed under Claudius,[703] and roads across the Alps in Noricum may have been built around the same time. In Dalmatia at least five major roads, radiating in all directions across the province from Salona, had been completed by a.d. zo.[704] In Pannonia the road across the Julian Alps from Aquileia to Emona was under construction in a.d. 14.[705] In Moesia a towpath through the upper gorge of the Danube was complete by a.d. 33/4, and was repaired under Claudius and doubtless on several other occasions given the conditions on the river when the thaw comes and the ice breaks.[706] In Thrace the early procurators were occupied with building police posts on the main roads across the Haemus to the Moesian legions on the Danube.[707] The organized construction of defensive walls for Roman colonies also indicates the essentially military character of these new foundations (see below).

Only among the enfranchised communities of southern Liburnia is there evidence for administration of a more civilian character. Under the governor Cornelius Dolabella a survey of the region was completed (forma Dolabelliana), that defined boundaries and rights in such matters as water supply. It seems that many disputes soon arose which required the governor's attention. The implementation of his judgment on the ground was normally assigned to a senior centurion who would see to the placing of boundary markers in the right places.[708]

Since the victory over Mithridates of Pontus the Greek cities along the Thracian coast of the Black Sea had come steadily under Roman influence and one, Callatis, is known to have entered a formal alliance. For centuries the cities of the Dobrudja had, under the leadership of Histria, exploited the resources of the delta and had managed a profitable commerce with the peoples of the interior. The five cities along the coast south of the delta, Histria, Tomis, Callatis, Dionysopolis and Odessus, formed together the Pentapolis of the 'Left Pontus'. Down to the Principate of Nero a common coinage had been produced for local circuladon, and the Pentapolis was incorporated into the province of Moesia. An assembly for religious ceremony and matters of common interest met at Tomis under a pontarch. This city had taken over from Histria as the principal port of the region and since the dme of Augustus a flotilla had been stationed there under a 'prefect of the sea-coast'.⁶² They were the local agents of Roman authority and acted as intermediar­ies between the cities and higher authority. For the exiled Ovid at Tomis the freezing of the river between January and March brought the danger of attack, but the poet also describes the peaceful transit in winter by the lumbering carts of the Jazyges and other Sarmatians over the newly bridged river. When Getae threatened, the cities of the Dobrudja looked to Rome for protection although, as we have already seen, this tended to arrive after the damage had been done. Ovid's advertised feeling that his safety depended on the Roman general and his legions was no doubt heartfelt, and his private shrine to the imperial family was likely, in part at least, a compensation for his feeling of insecurity. Further north in Histria the erection or repair of a temple to Augustus in his own lifetime testifies to the increasing ties between Rome and this region before it was formally incorporated in the province of Moesia.⁶³

Some indication of how these cities fared after the imposition of direct rule under Claudius is furnished by a document, inscribed in at least two copies, that defined the territories and economic privileges of Histria early under Trajan, to which was appended a dossier of letters addressed to the city from earlier goverriors. When Roman taxes were imposed along the lower Danube the Thracian Bank (Kipa Thraciae) was orga­nized as a separate district within the taxation province of Illyricum. Evidently the zealous agents of this bureau had challenged the tra­ditional privileges claimed by Histria in the delta, which included gathering pinewood and fishing in the Рейсе mouth. On appeal it seems that the city's claims were upheld on more than one occasion by the governor, before whom they had been supported by the local Roman prefects. Under Nero one governor made the comment that the principal revenue of Histria was derived from pickled fish, suggesting that another matter at issue may have been salt extraction, normally an imperial monopoly, traditionally carried on at several places along the coast.⁶⁴

On the matter of military deployment, that is apart from the presence of armies on expeditions, little is known until the army reforms of

⁶² Danoff 1958 (e 6j9) (Pentapolis), and Vulpe and Barnea 1968 (e 704) 66. The walls of Odessus (Varna) were repaired under Tiberius, IGBulg i^J j7. ⁶³ ISM 1 no. 146.

⁶⁴ ISM i nos. 67 and 68.

Augustus which resulted in the standing provincial armies of legions and auxilia. Aquileia is likely to have been the base for the legions until they were moved to camps in Pannonia, probably in or after the Bellum Pannonicum of 14-9 в.с. The legions in Macedonia, at least four in Crassus' army of 29—28 B.C., may already have been stationed in Dardania, perhaps at Scupi and Naissus, before the imperial command in the Balkans was instituted. Then one legion may have been moved up to the river, V Macedonica at Oescus. In the south of Illyricum the legionary bases known later at Burnum and Tilurium may have been established following the extension of the new imperial Illyricum to the Adriatic, perhaps in 11 в.с. After a.d. 9 the seven Danube legions were deployed as follows: in Pannonia VIII Augusta (Poetovio), IX Hispana (PSiscia) and XV Apollinaris (PEmona); in Dalmatia VII, formerly titled Macedonica, (Tilurium) and XI (Burnum); in 'Moesia et Triballia' V Macedonica (Oescus) and in Dardania IV Scythica (PNaissus).⁶⁵ So far excavation has contributed little to our knowledge of legionary deploy­ment in this period. Emona has not yielded any certain trace of the supposed base of XV Apollinaris that preceded the foundation of the colony in a.d. 14/15. Nor have Carnuntum or Burnum furnished evidence for occupation before the end of Tiberius' reign, though epitaphs indicate the presence of XV Apollinaris at the former and of XX at Burnum before it was replaced there in a.d. 9. In addition, numerous epitaphs of serving soldiers, datable to the period before a.d. 42 because they lack the titles Claudia pia fidelis (see above), testify that they were based at Burnum and Tilurium, though not necessarily in camps on the site of later fortresses, under Tiberius and Gaius. On the south bank of the Drava at Poetovio quantities of Augustan pottery from the buildings of the canabae relate to the presence of VIII Augusta. Among the large haul of Roman military equipment dredged from the river at Siscia was a helmet that belonged to a soldier of IX Hispana. In the Balkans the first dated record of IV Scythica and V Macedonia are the inscriptions on the rock-face of the upper Danube gorge dated to a.d. 33/4 noted above. From the find of an early epitaph, it has been suggested that Oescus was the base of the latter unit from the middle years of Augustus. Where the other was based is quite uncertain: Ratiaria on the Danube is a possibility but a more likely place is Naissus, the strategic crossroads of Dardania. The fact that no material evidence for an early occupation has been found at Naissus seems to count against this, though recent evidence cited above from Illyricum makes that inference less certain.⁶⁶