THE NORTHERN FRONTIER OF ITALY.

Northern boundary of the empire. The Roman Republic extended its territory chiefly by means of the sea towards the west, south, and east: little was done towards extending it in the direction, in which Italy and the two peninsulas dependent upon it to the west and east are connected with the great mainland of Europe. The region which lay behind Macedonia was not subject to the Romans, nor yet even the northern slope of the Alps; only the inland region behind the south coast of Gaul had been annexed by Caesar to the empire. Looking to the position occupied by the empire in general, this state of things could not be allowed to continue; the fact that the inert and unstable rule of the aristocracy had been superseded could not but tell with preeminent effect in this sphere of action. Caesar had not charged the heirs of his dictatorial power with the extension of Roman territory on the north slope of the Alps and on the right bank of the Rhine so directly as with the conquest of Britain; but in reality such an enlargement of the bounds suggested itself far more naturally, and was more necessary, than the subduing of the transmarine Celts, and we can readily understand why Augustus took in hand the former and omitted the latter. The task was divided into three great sections—the operations on the northern frontier of the Graeco–Macedonian peninsula, in the region of the middle and lower Danube, in Illyricum; those on the northern frontier of Italy itself, in the region of the upper Danube, in Raetia and Noricum; lastly, those on the right bank of the Rhine, in Germany. Though conducted for the most part independently, the military political measures in these regions had yet an inward connection; and, as they all had their origin from the free initiative of the Roman government, they can only be understood in their success or in their partial failure, when they are looked at from a military and political point of view as a whole. We shall, therefore, in our account of them, follow the connection of place rather than the order of time; the structure, of which they are but parts, is better viewed in its internal compactness than according to the succession of the several buildings composing it.

Dalmatian war. The prelude to this great aggregate of action was formed by the measures which Caesar the Younger, so soon as he had his hands free in Italy and Spain, undertook on the upper coasts of the Adriatic and in the inland region adjacent to them. In the hundred and fifty years that had elapsed since the founding of Aquileia, the Roman merchant had doubtless from that centre possessed himself more and more of the traffic; yet the state, directly as such, had made little progress. Considerable trading settlements had been formed at the chief ports of the Dalmatian coast, and also, on the road leading from Aquileia into the valley of the Save, at Nauportus (Upper Laybach); Dalmatia, Bosnia, Istria, and Carniola were deemed Roman territory, and the region along the coast at least was actually subject; but the founding of towns in a legal sense still remained to be done, quite as much as the subduing of the inhospitable interior.

Here, however, another element had to be taken into account. In the war between Caesar and Pompeius the native Dalmatians had as decidedly taken part for the latter as the Roman settlers there had taken the side of Caesar; even after the defeat of Pompeius at Pharsalus, and after the Pompeian fleet had been driven from the Illyrian waters (iv.456)iv.434., the natives continued their resistance with energy and success. The brave and able Publius Vatinius, who had formerly taken a very effective part in these conflicts, was sent with a strong army to Illyricum, apparently in the year before Caesar’s death, and that merely as the vanguard of the main army, with which the Dictator himself intended to follow in order to overthrow the Dacians, who just then were putting forth their rising power (iv.305)iv.291., and to regulate the state of affairs in the whole domain of the Danube. The execution of this plan was precluded by the daggers of the assassins. It was fortunate that the Dacians did not on their part penetrate into Macedonia; Vatinius himself fought against the Dalmatians unsuccessfully, and sustained severe losses. Thereafter, when the republicans took up arms in the East, the Illyrian army joined that of Brutus, and for a considerable time the Dalmatians remained free from attack. After the overthrow of the republicans, Antonius, to whom, in the partition of the empire, Macedonia had fallen, caused the insubordinate Dardani in the north–west and the Parthini on the coast (eastward from Durazzo) to be put to rout in the year 715,39. when the celebrated orator Gaius Asinius Pollio gained triumphal honours. In Illyricum, which was under Caesar, nothing could be done so long as the latter had to direct his whole power to the Sicilian war against Sextus Pompeius; but after its successful termination Caesar personally threw himself with vigour into this task. The small tribes from Doclea (Cernagora), as far as the Iapydes (near Fiume), were in the first campaign (719)35. either brought back to subjection or now for the first time subdued. It was not a great war with pitched battles of note, but the mountain–conflicts with the brave and desperate tribes, and the capture of the strongholds furnished in part with Roman appliances of war, formed no easy task; in none of his wars did Caesar display to an equal extent his own energy and personal valour. After the toilsome subjugation of the territory of the Iapydes, he marched in the very same year along the valley of the Kulpa to the point where it joins the Save; the strong place Siscia (Sziszek) situated at that point, the chief place of arms of the Pannonians, against which the Romans had never hitherto advanced with success, was now occupied and destined as a basis for the war against the Dacians, which Caesar purposed next to undertake. In the two following years (720, 721)34,33., the Dalmatians, who had for a number of years been in arms against the Romans, were forced to submit after the fall of their fortress Promona (Promina, near Dernis, above Sebenico). Still more important than these military successes was the work of peace, which was carried on about the same time, and which they were intended to secure. It was doubtless in these years that the ports along the Istrian and Dalmatian coast, so far as they lay within the field of Caesar’s rule, Tergeste (Trieste), Pola, Iader (Zara), Salonae (near Spalato), Narona (at the mouth of the Narenta), as well as Emona (Laybach), beyond the Alps, on the route from Aquileia over the Julian Alps to the Save, obtained, through Caesar’s successor, some of them town–walls, all of them town–rights. The places themselves had probably all been already long in existence as Roman villages; but it was at any rate of essential importance that they were now inserted on a footing of equal privilege among the Italian municipia.

Preparation for the Dacian war. The Dacian war was intended to follow; but the civil war stepped in before it a second time. It summoned the ruler not to Illyricum, but to the East, and the heavings of the great decisive struggle between Caesar and Antonius reached even to the distant region of the Danube. The people of the Dacians, united and purified by king Burebista (Boerebistas, iv.305)iv.291., now under king Cotiso, found itself courted by the two antagonists—Caesar was even accused of having sought the king’s daughter in marriage, and having offered to him in turn the hand of his five–year–old daughter Julia. It is easy to understand how the Dacian should, in view of the invasion planned by the father and ushered in by the son with the fortification of Siscia, have attached himself to the side of Antonius; and had he done what people in Rome feared—had he, while Caesar was fighting in the East, penetrated from the north into defenceless Italy; or had Antonius, in accordance with the proposal of the Dacians, sought the decision of the struggle not in Epirus but in Macedonia, and drawn thither the Dacian bands to help him, the fortunes of the war might perhaps have ended otherwise. But neither the one nor the other took place; moreover, at that very time the Dacian state, created by the vigorous hand of Burebista, again went to pieces; internal troubles, perhaps also the attacks from the north by the Germanic Bastarnae and by the Sarmatian tribes that subsequently environed Dacia on all sides, prevented the Dacians from interfering in the Roman civil war, in the decision of which their future also was at stake.

Immediately after that war was decided, Caesar set himself to regulate the state of things on the lower Danube. But, partly because the Dacians themselves were no longer so much to be dreaded as formerly, partly because Caesar now ruled no longer merely over Illyricum, but over the whole Graeco–Macedonian peninsula, the latter became the primary basis of the Roman operations. Let us picture to ourselves the peoples, and the relations of the ruling powers, which Augustus found there.

Macedonian frontier.Macedonia had been for centuries a Roman province. As such, it did not reach beyond Stobi to the north and the Rhodope mountains to the east; but the range of Rome’s power stretched far beyond the frontier proper of the country, although varying in compass and not fixed in point of form. Approximately the Romans seem to have been the leading power at that time as far as the Haemus (Balkan), while the region beyond the Balkan as far as the Danube had been possibly trodden by Roman troops, but was by no means dependent on Rome.1 Beyond the Rhodope mountains the Thracian dynasts, who were neighbours to Macedonia, especially those of the Odrysians (ii.309)ii.290., to whom the greatest portion of the south coast and a part of the coast of the Black Sea were subject, had been brought by the expedition of Lucullus (iv.41)iv.39. under the Roman protectorate; while the inhabitants of the more inland territories, especially the Bessi on the upper Maritza, were perhaps called subjects, but were not so, and their incursions into the settled territory as well as retaliatory expeditions into theirs were of constant occurrence. Thus, about the year 694 60., Augustus’ own father, Gaius Octavius, and in the year 711,43. during the preparations for the war against the triumvirs, Marcus Brutus had fought against them. Another Thracian tribe, the Dentheletae (in the district of Sofia), had, even in Cicero’s time, on an incursion into Macedonia, threatened to besiege its capital Thessalonica. With the Dardani, the western neighbours of the Thracians, a branch of the Illyrian family, who inhabited southern Servia and the district of Prisrend, Curio, the predecessor in office of Lucullus, had fought successfully; and ten years later Cicero’s colleague in the consulate, Gaius Antonius, unsuccessfully in the year 692 62.. Below the Dardanian territory, again, there were settled close to the Danube Thracian tribes, the once powerful but now reduced Triballi in the valley of the Oescus (in the region of Plewna), and farther on, along both banks of the Danube to its mouth, Dacians, or, as on the right bank of the river they were usually called by the old national name which was retained also by their Asiatic kinsmen, Mysians or Moesians, probably in Burebista’s time a part of his kingdom, now once more split up into different principalities. But the most powerful people between the Balkan and the Danube at that time were the Bastarnae. We have already on several occasions met with this brave and numerous race, the eastmost branch of the great Germanic family (ii.308)ii.290.. Settled, strictly speaking, behind the Transdanubian Dacians beyond the mountains which separate Transylvania from Moldavia, at the mouths of the Danube and in the wide region from these to the Dniester, they were themselves outside of the Roman sphere; but from their ranks especially had both king Philip of Macedonia and king Mithridates of Pontus formed their armies, and in this way the Romans had often already fought with them. Now they had crossed the Danube in great masses, and established themselves north of the Haemus; in so far as the Dacian war, as planned by CÆsar the father and then by the son, had doubtless for its object to gain the right bank of the lower Danube, it was not less directed against them than against the Dacian Moesians on the right bank. The Greek coast towns in the barbarian land, Odessus (near Varna), Tomis, Istropolis, hard pressed by these movements of the nations surging around them, were here as everywhere from the outset clients of the Romans.

At the time of Caesar’s dictatorship, when Burebista was at the height of his power, the Dacians had executed that fearful devastating raid along the coast as far down as Apollonia, the traces of which were not yet obliterated after a century and a half. It may probably have been this invasion that at first induced Caesar the elder to undertake the Dacian war; and after that the son now ruled also over Macedonia, he could not but feel himself under obligation to interfere here at once and with energy. The defeat which Cicero’s colleague, Antonius, had sustained near Istropolis at the hands of the Bastarnae may be taken as a proof that these Greeks needed once more the aid of the Romans.

Subjugation of Moesia by Crassus.In fact soon after the battle of Actium (725)29. Marcus Licinius Crassus, the grandson of him who had fallen at Carrhae, was sent by Caesar to Macedonia as governor, and charged now to carry out the campaign that had twice been hindered. The Bastarnae, who just then had invaded Thrace, submitted without resistance, when Crassus had them summoned to leave the Roman territory; but their retreat was not sufficient for the Roman. He, on his part, crossed the Haemus,2 at the confluence of the Cibrus (Tzibritza) with the Danube, defeated the enemy, whose king, Deldo, was left on the field of battle; and, with the help of a Dacian prince adhering to the Romans, took prisoners all that had escaped from the battle and sought shelter in a neighbouring stronghold. Without offering further resistance the whole Moesian territory submitted to the conqueror of the Bastarnae. These returned next year to avenge the defeat which they had suffered; but they once more succumbed, and, with them, such of the Moesian tribes as had again taken up arms. Thus these enemies were once for all expelled from the right bank of the Danube, and the latter was entirely subjected to the Roman rule. At the same time the Thracians not hitherto subject were chastised, the national shrine of Dionysos was taken from the Bessi, and the administration of it was entrusted to the princes of the Odrysians, who generally from that time, under the protection of the Roman supreme power, exercised, or were assumed to exercise, supremacy over the Thracian tribes south of the Haemus. The Greek towns, moreover, on the coast of the Black Sea were placed under its protection, and the rest of the conquered territory was assigned to various vassal–princes, on whom devolved accordingly, in the first instance, the protection of the frontier of the empire;3 Rome had no legions of her own left for these distant regions. Macedonia thereby became an inland province, which had no further need of military administration. The goal, which had been contemplated in those plans of Dacian warfare, was attained.

Certainly this goal was merely a provisional one. But before Augustus took in hand the definitive regulation of the northern frontier he applied himself to reorganise the provinces already belonging to the empire; more than ten years elapsed over the arrangement of things in Spain, Gaul, Asia, and Syria. How, when what was needful in these quarters was done, he set to work on his comprehensive task, we have now to tell.

Subjugation of the Alps.Italy, which bore sway over three continents, was still, we have said, by no means absolutely master in her own house. The Alps, which sheltered her on the north, were in all their extent, from one end to the other, filled with small and but little civilised tribes of Illyrian, Raetian, or Celtic nationality, whose territories in part bordered closely on those of the great towns of the Transpadana—that of the Trumpilini (Val Trompia) on the town of Brixia; that of the Camunni (Val Camonica above the Lago d’Iseo) on the town of Bergomum; that of the Salassi (Val d’Aosta) on Eporedia (Ivrea)—and whose neighbourhood was by no means wont to be peaceful. Often enough conquered and proclaimed at the Capitol as vanquished, these tribes, in spite of the laurels of the men of note that triumphed over them, were constantly plundering the farmers and the merchants of Upper Italy. The mischief was not to be checked in earnest until the government resolved to cross the Alpine chain and bring its northern slope also under their power; for beyond doubt numbers of these depredators were constantly streaming over the mountains to pillage the rich adjoining country. In the direction of Gaul also similar work had to be done; the tribes in the upper valley of the Rhone (Valais and Vaud) had indeed been subdued by Caesar, but are also named among those that gave trouble to the generals of his son. On the other side, the peaceful border–districts of Gaul complained of the constant incursions of the Raeti. The numerous expeditions arranged by Augustus on account of these evils do not admit, or require, historical recital; they are not recorded in the triumphal Fasti and do not fall under that head, but they gave to Italy for the first time settled life in the north. We may mention the subjugation of the already named Camunni in 73816. by the governor of Illyria, and that of certain Ligurian tribes in the region of Nice in 74014., because they show how, even about the middle of the Augustan age, these insubordinate tribes pressed directly upon Italy. If the emperor subsequently, in the collective report on his imperial administration, declared that violence had not been wrongfully employed by him against any of these small tribes, this must be understood to the effect that cessions of territory and change of abode were demanded of them, and they resisted the demand; only the petty cantonal union formed under king Cottius of Segusio (Susa) submitted without a struggle to the new arrangement.

Subjugation of the Raeti. The southern slopes and the valleys of the Alps formed the arena of these conflicts. The establishment of the Romans on the north slope of the mountains and in the adjoining country to the northward followed in 73915.. The two step–sons of Augustus reckoned as belonging to the imperial house, Tiberius the subsequent emperor, and his brother Drusus, were thereby introduced into the career of generalship for which they were destined; very secure and very grateful were the laurels put before them in prospect. Drusus penetrated from Italy up the valley of the Adige into the Raetian mountains, and achieved here a first victory; for the farther advance his brother, then governor of Gaul, lent him a helping hand from Helvetia; on the lake of Constance itself the Roman triremes defeated the boats of the Vindelici; on the emperor’s day, the 1st August 739 15., in the vicinity of the sources of the Danube, fought the last battle, whereby Raetia and the land of the Vindelici—that is, the Tyrol, East Switzerland, and Bavaria—became thenceforth constituent parts of the Roman empire. The emperor Augustus had gone in person to Gaul to superintend the war and the organisation of the new province. At the point where the Alps abut on the Gulf of Genoa, on the height above Monaco, a monument commanding a wide prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea, and not even yet wholly effaced, was erected some years later by grateful Italy to the emperor Augustus, because under his government all the Alpine tribes from the Upper to the Lower Sea—the inscription enumerates forty–six of them—had been brought under the power of the Roman people. It was no more than the simple truth; and this war was what war ought to be—the guardian and the guarantee of peace.

Organisation of Raetia.A task more difficult doubtless than that of the war proper was the organisation of the new territory; the more especially as considerations of internal policy exerted to some extent a very disturbing influence on it. Since, as things stood, the preponderance of military power might not be located in Italy, the government had to take care that the great military commands were removed as far as possible from its immediate vicinity; indeed one of the motives that conduced to the occupation of Raetia itself was the desire to remove the command, which probably up to this time could not have been dispensed with in Upper Italy itself, definitively away from that region, as was thereupon actually done. It might most naturally have been expected that there would be created on the north slope of the Alps a great centre for the military posts indispensable in the newly acquired territory; but a course the very opposite of this was followed. Between Italy on the one hand, and the great commands on the Rhine and Danube on the other, there was drawn a girdle of small governorships, which were not merely all filled up by the emperor, but were also filled up throughout with men not belonging to the senate. Italy and the province of southern Gaul were separated by the three small military districts of the Maritime Alps (department of the Maritime Alps and the province of Cuneo), the Cottian Alps with Segusio (Susa) as its chief town, and probably the Graian Alps (East Savoy). Among these the second, administered by the already named cantonal prince, Cottius, and his descendants for a time under the form of clientship,4 was of most importance, but they all possessed a certain military power, and were primarily destined to maintain public safety in the territory concerned, and above all on the important imperial highways traversing it. The upper valley of the Rhone again—that is, the Valais, and the newly conquered Raetia—were placed under a commander of higher standing not in rank, but doubtless in power; a corps, relatively speaking, considerable was here for the time being indispensably requisite. In order, however, to provide for its being diminished as far as possible, Raetia was in great measure depopulated by the removal of its inhabitants. The circuit was closed by the similarly organised province of Noricum, embracing the largest part of what is now German Austria. This wide and fertile region had submitted without substantial resistance to the Roman rule, probably in the form of a dependent principality established in the first instance, but with its prince erelong giving place to the imperial procurator, from whom, for that matter, he did not essentially differ. Some, at all events, of the Rhenish and Danubian legions had their fixed quarters in the immediate neighbourhood, on the one hand of the Raetian frontier at Vindonissa, on the other of the Norican frontier at Poetovio, obviously to keep in check the adjoining province; but in that intermediate region as little were there armies of the first rank with legions under senatorial generals, as there were senatorial governors. The distrust towards the corporation governing the state alongside of the emperor finds very forcible expression in this arrangement.

Roads and colonies in the Alps.Next to the protection of the peace of Italy the chief aim of this organisation was to secure its communications with the north, which were of not less urgent importance for traffic than in a military point of view. With special energy Augustus took up this task; and he doubtless deserved that his name should still live at the present day in those of Aosta and Augsburg, perhaps also in that of the Julian Alps. The old coast–road, which Augustus partly renewed, partly constructed, from the Ligurian coast through Gaul and Spain to the Atlantic Ocean, can only have served purposes of traffic. The road also over the Cottian Alps, already opened up by Pompeius (iv.28)iv.27., was finished under Augustus by the already mentioned prince of Susa, and named after him; in like manner a trading route, it connects Italy, by way of Turin and Susa, with the commercial capital of south Gaul, Arelate. But the military line proper—the direct connection between Italy and the camps on the Rhine—led through the valley of the Dora Baltea from Italy partly to Lyons the capital of Gaul, partly to the Rhine. While the republic had confined itself to bringing into its power the entrance of that valley by founding Eporedia (Ivrea), Augustus possessed himself of it entirely by not merely subjugating its inhabitants—the still restless Salassi, with whom he had already fought during the Dalmatian war—but extirpating them outright; 36,000 of them, including 8000 fighting men, were sold under the hammer into slavery in the market–place of Eporedia, and the purchasers were bound not to grant freedom to any of them within twenty years. The camp itself, from which his general Varro Murena had achieved their final defeat in 72925., became the fortress, which, occupied by 3000 settlers taken from the imperial guard, was to secure the communications—the town Augusta Praetoria, the modern Aosta, whose walls and gates then erected are still standing. It commanded subsequently two Alpine routes, as well that which led over the Graian Alps or Little St. Bernard, along the upper IsÈre and the Rhone to Lyons, as that which ran over the Poenine Alps, the Great St. Bernard, to the valley of the Rhone and to the Lake of Geneva, and thence into the valleys of the Aar and the Rhine. But it was for the first of these roads that the town was designed, as it originally had only gates leading east and west; nor could this be otherwise, for the fortress was built ten years before the occupation of Raetia; in those years, moreover, the later organisation of the camps on the Rhine was not yet in existence, and the direct connection between the capitals of Italy and Gaul was altogether of the foremost importance. In the direction of the Danube we have already mentioned the laying out of Emona on the upper Save, on the old trade–road from Aquileia over the Julian Alps into the Pannonian territory. This road was at the same time the chief artery for the military communication of Italy with the region of the Danube. Lastly, with the conquest of Raetia was connected the opening of the route which led from the last Italian town Tridentum (Trent), up the Adige valley, to the newly established Augusta in the land of the Vindelici, the modern Augsburg, and onward to the upper Danube. Subsequently, when the son of the general who had first opened up this region came to reign, this road received the name of the Claudian highway.5 It furnished the means of connection, indispensable from a military point of view, between Raetia and Italy; but in consequence of the comparatively small importance of the Raetian army, and doubtless also in consequence of the more difficult communication, it never had the same importance as the route of Aosta.

The Alpine passes and the north slope of the Alps were thus in secure possession of the Romans. Beyond the Alps there stretched to the east of the Rhine the land of the Germans; to the south of the Danube that of the Pannonians and the Moesians. Here, too, soon after the occupation of Raetia, the offensive was taken, and nearly contemporaneously in both directions. Let us look first at what occurred on the Danube.

Erection of Illyricum. The Danubian region, to all appearance up to 72727. administered along with Upper Italy, became then, on the reorganisation of the empire, an independent administrative district, Illyricum, under a governor of its own. It consisted of Dalmatia, with the country behind it, as far as the Drin—while the coast farther to the south had for long belonged to the province of Macedonia—and of the Roman possessions in the land of the Pannonians on the Save. The region between the Haemus and the Danube as far as the Black Sea, which Crassus had shortly before brought into dependence on the empire, as well as Noricum and Raetia, stood in a relation of clientship to Rome, and so did not belong as such to this province, but withal were primarily dependent on the governor of Illyricum. Thrace, north of the Haemus, still by no means pacified, fell, from a military point of view, to the same district. It was a continued effect of the original organisation, and one which subsisted down to a late period, that the whole region of the Danube from Raetia to Moesia was comprehended as a customs–district under the name Illyricum in the wider sense. Legions were stationed only in Illyricum proper, in the other districts there were probably no imperial troops at all, or at the utmost small detachments; the chief command was held by the proconsul of the new province coming from the senate; while the soldiers and officers were, as a matter of course, imperial. It attests the serious character of the offensive beginning after the conquest of Raetia, that in the first instance the co–ruler Agrippa took over the command in the region of the Danube, to whom the proconsul of Illyricum had to become de iure subordinate; and then, when Agrippa’s sudden death in the spring of 74212. broke down this combination, Illyricum in the following year passed into imperial administration, and the imperial generals obtained the chief commands in it. Soon three military centres were here formed, which thereupon brought about the administrative division of the Danubian region into three parts. The small principalities in the territory conquered by Crassus gave place to the province of Moesia, the governor of which henceforth, in what is now Servia and Bulgaria, guarded the frontier against the Dacians and Bastarnae. In what had hitherto been the province of Illyricum, a part of the legionaries was posted on the Kerka and the Cettina, to keep in check the still troublesome Dalmatians. The chief force was stationed in Pannonia, on what was then the boundary of the empire, the Save. This distribution of the legions and organisation of the provinces cannot be fixed with chronological precision; probably the serious wars which were waged simultaneously against the Pannonians and the Thracians, of which we have immediately to speak, led in the first instance to the institution of the governorship of Moesia, and it was not till some time later that the Dalmatian legions and those on the Save obtained commanders–in–chief of their own.

First Pannonian war of Tiberius.As the expeditions against the Pannonians and the Germans were, as it were, a repetition of the Raetian campaign on a more extended scale, so the leaders, who were put at their head with the title of imperial legates, were the same—once more the two princes of the imperial house, Tiberius, who, in the place of Agrippa, took up the command in Illyricum, and Drusus, who went to the Rhine, both now no longer inexperienced youths, but men in the prime of their years, and well fitted to take in hand severe work.

Immediate pretexts for the waging of war in the region of the Danube were not wanting. Marauders from Pannonia, and even from the peaceful Noricum, carried pillage in the year 73816. as far as Istria. Two years thereafter the Illyrian provincials took up arms against their masters, and, although they returned to obedience without offering opposition when Agrippa took over the command in the autumn of 74113., yet immediately after his death the disturbances are alleged to have begun afresh. We cannot say how far these Roman accounts correspond to the truth; certainly the pushing forward of the Roman frontier, required by the general political situation, formed the real motive and aim of the war. As to the three campaigns of Tiberius in Pannonia from 742 to 74412to10. we are very imperfectly informed. Their result was stated by the government as the establishment of the Danube as the boundary for the province of Illyricum. That this river was thenceforth looked upon in its whole course as the boundary of Roman territory, is doubtless correct; but a subjugation in the proper sense, or even an occupation, of the whole of this wide domain by no means took place at that time. The chief resistance to Tiberius was offered by the tribes already at an earlier date declared Roman, especially by the Dalmatians; among those first effectively subdued at that time, the most noted was that of the Pannonian Breuci on the lower Save. The Roman armies, during these campaigns, probably did not cross the Drave, and did not in any case transfer their standing camp to the Danube. The region between the Save and Drave was at all events occupied, and the headquarters of the Illyrian northern army were transferred from Siscia on the Save to Poetovio (Pettau) on the middle Drave, while in the Norican region recently occupied the Roman garrisons reached as far as the Danube at Carnuntum (Petronell, near Vienna), at that time the last Norican town towards the east. The wide and vast region between the Drave and the Danube, which now forms western Hungary, was to all appearance at that time not even militarily occupied. This was in keeping with the whole plan of the offensive operations that were begun; the object sought was to be in touch with the Gallic army, and for the new imperial frontier in the north–east the natural base was not Buda, but Vienna.

Thracian war of Piso.Complementary in some measure to this Pannonian expedition of Tiberius was that which was simultaneously undertaken against the Thracians by Lucius Piso, perhaps the first governor that Moesia had of its own. The two great neighbouring nations, the Illyrians and the Thracians, of whom we shall treat more fully in a subsequent chapter, stood alike at that time in need of subjugation. The tribes of inland Thrace showed themselves still more obstinate than the Illyrians, and far from subordinate to the kings set over them by Rome; in 73816. a Roman army had to advance thither and come to the help of the princes against the Bessi. If we had more exact accounts of the conflicts waged in the one quarter as in the other in the years 741 to 74313to11., the contemporary action of the Thracians and Illyrians would perhaps appear as concerted. Certain it is that the mass of the Thracian tribes south of the Haemus and presumably also those settled in Moesia took part in this national war, and that the resistance of the Thracians was not less obstinate than that of the Illyrians. It was for them at the same time a religious war; the shrine of Dionysos,6 taken from the Bessi and assigned to the Odrysian princes well disposed to Rome, was not forgotten; a priest of this Dionysos stood at the head of the insurrection, and it was directed in the first instance against those Odrysian princes. One of them was taken and put to death, the other was driven away; the insurgents, in part armed and disciplined after the Roman model, were victors in the first engagement over Piso, and penetrated as far as Macedonia and into the Thracian Chersonese; fears were entertained for Asia. Ultimately, however, Roman discipline gained the superiority over these brave opponents; in several campaigns Piso mastered the resistance, and the command of Moesia, instituted either already on this occasion or soon afterwards on “the Thracian shore,” broke up the connection of the Daco–Thracian peoples, by separating the tribes on the left bank of the Danube and their kinsmen south of the Haemus from each other, and permanently secured the Roman rule in the region of the lower Danube.

Attack of the Germans. The Germans still more than the Pannonians and the Thracians gave the Romans occasion to feel that the existing state of things could not permanently continue. The boundary of the empire since Caesar’s time had been the Rhine from the lake of Constance to its mouth (iv.258)iv.247.. It was not a demarcation of peoples, for already of old in the north–east of Gaul the Celts had on various occasions mingled with Germans, the Treveri and Nervii would at least gladly have been Germans (iv.244)iv.233., and on the middle Rhine Caesar himself had provided settlements for the remnant of the hosts of Ariovistus—Triboci (in Alsace) Nemetes (about Spires), Vangiones (about Worms). Those Germans on the left of the Rhine indeed adhered more firmly to the Roman rule than the Celtic cantons, and it was not they that opened the gates of Gaul to their countrymen on the right bank. But these, long accustomed to predatory raids over the river and by no means forgetting the half successful attempts on several occasions to settle there, came unbidden. The only Germanic tribe beyond the Rhine, which already in Caesar’s time had separated from their countrymen and placed themselves under Roman protection, the Ubii, had to give way before the hatred of their exasperated kinsmen and to seek protection and new abodes on the Roman bank (716)38.; Agrippa, although personally present in Gaul, had not been able, amidst the pressure of the Sicilian war then impending, to help them otherwise, and had crossed the Rhine merely to effect their transference. From this settlement of theirs our Cologne subsequently grew up. Not merely were the Romans trading on the right bank of the Rhine subjected to various injuries by the Germans, so that even in 72925. an advance over the Rhine was executed, and Agrippa in 73420. had to expel from Gaul Germanic hordes that had come thither from the Rhine; but in 73816. the further bank was affected by a more general movement, which terminated in an invasion on a great scale. The Sugambri on the Ruhr took the lead, and with them their neighbours the Usipes on the north in the valley of the Lippe, and the Tencteri on the south; they attacked the Roman traders sojourning among them and nailed them to the cross, then crossed the Rhine, pillaged the Gallic cantons far and wide, and, when the governor of Germany sent the legate Marcus Defeat of Lollius.Lollius with the fifth legion against them, they first cut off its cavalry and then put the legion itself to disgraceful flight, on which occasion even its eagle fell into their hands. After all this they returned unassailed to their homes. This miscarriage of the Roman army, though not of importance in itself, was not to be despised in presence of the Germanic movement and even of the troublesome feeling in Gaul; Augustus himself went to the province attacked, and this occurrence may possibly have been the immediate occasion for the adoption of that great movement of offence, which, beginning with the Raetian war in 73915., led on to the campaigns of Tiberius in Illyricum and of Drusus in Germany.

German war of Drusus.Nero Claudius Drusus, born in 71638. by Livia in the house of her new husband, afterwards Augustus, and loved and treated by the latter like a son—evil tongues said, as his son—the very image of manly beauty and of winning grace in converse, a brave soldier and an able general, a pronounced panegyrist, moreover, of the old republican system, and in every respect the most popular prince of the imperial house, took up, on the return of Augustus to Italy (741)13., the administration of Gaul and the chief command against the Germans, whose subjugation was now contemplated in earnest. We have no adequate means of knowing either the strength of the army then stationed on the Rhine, or how matters stood with the Germans; this much only is clear that the latter were not in a position suitably to meet the compact attack. The region of the Neckar formerly possessed by the Helvetii (iii.182)iii.173., then for long a debateable border–land between them and the Germans, lay desolate and dominated on the one side by the recently subdued district of the Vindelici, on the other side by the Germans friendly to Rome about Strassburg, Spires, and Worms. Farther northward, in the region of the upper Main, were settled the Marcomani, perhaps the most powerful of the Suebian tribes, but from of old at enmity with the Germans of the middle Rhine. Northward of the Main followed first in the Taunus the Chatti, farther down the Rhine the already named Tencteri, Sugambri, and Usipes; behind them the powerful Cherusci on the Weser, besides a number of tribes of secondary rank. As it was these tribes on the middle Rhine, with the Sugambri at their head, that had carried out that attack on Roman Gaul, the retaliatory expedition of Drusus was directed mainly against them, and they too combined for joint resistance to Drusus and for the institution of a national army to be formed from the contingents of all these cantons. The Frisian tribes, however, on the coast of the North Sea did not join the movement, but persevered in their peculiar isolation.

It was the Germans who assumed the offensive. The Sugambri and their allies again seized all the Romans whom they could lay hold of on their bank, and nailed to the cross the centurions among them, twenty in number. The allied tribes resolved once more to invade Gaul, and even divided the spoil beforehand—the Sugambri were to obtain the people, the Cherusci the horses, the Suebian tribes the gold and silver. So they attempted in the beginning of 74212. again to cross the Rhine, and hoped for the support of the Germans on the left bank of the river, and even for an insurrection of the Gallic cantons just at that time excited by the unwonted matter of the census. But the young general took his measures well; he nipped the movement in the Roman territory before it was well set agoing, drove back the invaders even as they were crossing the river, and then crossed the stream on his own part, in order to lay waste the territory of the Usipes and Sugambri. This was a repulse for the time; the plan of the war proper, designed on a grander scale, started from the acquisition of the North Sea coast and of the mouths of the Ems and the Elbe. The numerous and valiant tribe of the Batavi in the delta of the Rhine was soon incorporated—to all appearance, at that time and by amicable concert—in the Roman empire; with its help a communication by water was established from the Rhine to the Zuyder See, and from the latter to the North Sea, which opened up for the Rhine–fleet a safer and shorter way to the mouths of the Ems and Elbe. The Frisians on the north coast followed the example of the Batavi and likewise submitted to the foreign rule. It was doubtless still more the moderate policy than the military preponderance of the Romans, which paved the way for them here; these tribes remained almost wholly exempt from tribute, and were drawn upon for war–service in a way which did not alarm, but allured them. From this basis the expedition proceeded along the coast of the North Sea; in the open sea the island of Burchanis (perhaps Borchum off East Friesland) was taken by assault; on the Ems the fleet of boats of the Bructeri was vanquished by the Roman fleet; Drusus reached as far as the Chauci at the mouth of the Weser. The fleet indeed on its return homewards encountered dangerous and unknown shallows, and, but for the Frisians affording a safe escort to the shipwrecked army, it would have been in a very critical position. Nevertheless, by this first campaign the coast from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Weser had been gained for Rome.

After the coast was thus acquired, the subjugation of the interior began in the next year (743)11.. It was materially facilitated by the dissensions among the Germans of the middle Rhine. For the attack on Gaul attempted in the previous year the Chatti had not furnished the promised contingent; in natural, but still far from politic, anger the Sugambri had suddenly assailed the land of the Chatti with all their force, and so their own territory as well as that of their next neighbours on the Rhine was occupied without difficulty by the Romans. The Chatti thereupon submitted to the enemies of their enemies without resistance; nevertheless, they were directed to evacuate the bank of the Rhine and to occupy instead of it that district which the Sugambri had hitherto possessed. Not less did the powerful Cherusci farther inland on the middle Weser succumb. The Chauci settled on the lower stream were now assailed by land as they had been before by sea; and thus the whole territory between the Rhine and Weser was taken possession of, at least at the places of decisive military importance. The return was, indeed, just as in the previous year, on the point of being almost fatal; at Arbalo (site unknown) the Romans found themselves surrounded on all sides in a narrow defile by the Germans and deprived of their communications; but the firm discipline of the legions, and the arrogant confidence of success withal on the part of the Germans, changed the threatened defeat into a brilliant victory.7 In the next year (744)10. the Chatti revolted, indignant at the loss of their old beautiful home; but now they for their part remained alone, and were, after an obstinate resistance, and not without considerable loss, subdued by the Romans (745)9.. The Marcomani on the upper Main, who after the occupation of the territory of the Chatti were next exposed to the attack, gave way before it, and retired into the land of the Boii, the modern Bohemia, without interfering from this point, where they were removed beyond the immediate sphere of the Roman power, in the conflicts on the Rhine. In the whole region between the Rhine and Weser the war was at an end. Drusus was able in 7459. to set foot on the right bank of the Weser in the canton of the Cherusci, and to advance thence to the Elbe, which he did not cross, and presumably was instructed not to do so. Several severe combats took place; successful resistance was nowhere offered.Death of Drusus. But on the return–march, which led apparently up the Saale and thence to the Weser, a severe blow befell the Romans, not through the enemy but through an incalculable misfortune. The general fell with his horse and broke his thigh–bone; after thirty days of suffering he expired in the distant land between the Saale and Weser,8 which had never before been trodden by a Roman army, in the arms of his brother who had hastened thither from Rome, in the thirtieth year of his age and in the full consciousness of his vigour and of his successes, long and deeply lamented by his adherents and the whole people—perhaps to be pronounced fortunate, because the gods granted to him to depart from life young, and to escape the disillusions and embitterments which tell most painfully on those highest in station, while his brilliant and heroic figure continues still to live in the remembrance of the world.

Continuance of the war by Tiberius.In the course of things, as a whole, the death of the able general made—as might be expected—no change. His brother Tiberius arrived early enough not merely to close his eyes, but also with his firm hand to bring the army back and to carry on the conquest of Germany. He commanded there during the two following years (746, 747)8,7., in the course of which there were no conflicts on a larger scale, but the Roman troops showed themselves far and wide between the Rhine and Elbe, and when Tiberius made the demand that all the countries should formally acknowledge the Roman rule, and at the same time declared that he could only accept that acknowledgment from all the cantons simultaneously, they complied without exception; last of all the Sugambri, for whom indeed there was no real peace. What progress in a military point of view had been made, is shown by the expedition, falling a little later, of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. The latter was able, as governor of Illyricum, probably from Vindelicia as a basis, to assign to a restless horde of Hermunduri settlements in the land of the Marcomani itself; and on this expedition he reached as far as, and beyond, the upper Elbe, without meeting with resistance.9 The Marcomani in Bohemia were completely isolated, and the rest of Germany between the Rhine and Elbe was a Roman province—though still by no means reduced to tranquillity.

Camp on the left bank of the Rhine.Of the military–political organisation of Germany, as at that time planned, we have but a very imperfect knowledge, because, on the one hand, there is an utter want of accurate information as to the arrangements made in earlier times to protect the Gallic eastern frontier, and, on the other hand, those made by the two brothers were in great part destroyed by the subsequent development of affairs. There was no attempt to move the Roman frontier–guard away from the Rhine; to this matters might perhaps come, but they had not yet done so. Just as was the case in Illyricum at that time with the Danube, the Elbe was doubtless the political boundary of the empire, but the Rhine was the line of frontier–defence, and from the camps on the Rhine the connections in rear ran to the great towns of Gaul and to its ports.10 The great headquarters during these campaigns was what was afterwards named the “Old Camp,” Castra vetera, (Birten near Xanten), the first considerable height below Bonn on the left bank of the Rhine, from a military point of view corresponding nearly to the modern Wesel on the right. This place, occupied perhaps since the beginning of the Roman rule on the Rhine, had been instituted by Augustus as a stronghold for curbing Germany; and, if the fortress was at all times the basis for the Roman defensive on the left bank of the Rhine, it was not less well chosen for the invasion of the right, situated, as it was, opposite to the mouth of the Lippe which was navigable far up, and connected with the right bank by a strong bridge. The counterpart to this “Old Camp,” at the mouth of the Lippe was probably formed by that at the mouth of the Main, Mogontiacum, the modern Mentz, to all appearance a creation of Drusus; at least the already mentioned cessions of territory imposed on the Chatti, as well as the constructions in the Taunus to be mentioned further on, show that Drusus clearly perceived the military importance of the line of the Main, and thus also that of its key on the left bank of the Rhine. If the legionary camp on the Aar was, as it would seem, instituted to keep the Raeti and Vindelici to their obedience (p.18), it may be presumed to have been laid out about this time; but then it had merely an outward connection with the Gallico–German military arrangements. The legionary camp at Strassburg hardly reaches back to so early a time. The line from Mentz to Wesel formed the basis of the Roman military dispositions. That Drusus and Tiberius had—apart from the Narbonese province which was then no longer imperial—the governorship of all Gaul as well as the command of all the Rhenish legions, is an ascertained point; apart from these princes, the civil administration of Gaul may at that time perhaps have been separated from the command of the troops on the Rhine, but scarcely was the latter thus early divided into two co–ordinate commands.11

Positions on the right bank of the Rhine.Correlative to these military arrangements on the left bank of the Rhine were those adopted on the right. In the first place the Romans took possession of the right bank itself. This step affected above all the Sugambri, in whose case certainly retaliation for the captured eagle and the crucified centurions contributed to it. The envoys sent to declare their submission, the most eminent men of the nation, were, at variance with the law of nations, treated as prisoners of war, and perished miserably in the Italian fortresses. Of the mass of the people, 40,000 were removed from their homes and settled in the north of Gaul, where they subsequently, perhaps, meet us under the name of the Cugerni. Only a small and harmless remnant of the powerful tribe was allowed to remain in their old abodes. Suebian bands were also transferred to Gaul, other tribes were pushed farther into the interior, such as the Marsi and doubtless also the Chatti; on the middle Rhine the native population of the right bank was everywhere dislodged or at any rate weakened. Along this bank of the Rhine, moreover, fortified posts, fifty in number, were instituted. In front of Mogontiacum the territory taken from the Chatti, thenceforth the canton of the Mattiaci near the modern Wiesbaden, was brought within the Roman lines, and the height of Taunus strongly fortified.12 But above all the line of the Lippe was taken possession of from Vetera; of the two military roads furnished at intervals of a day’s march with forts, on the two banks of the river, the one on the right bank at least is as certainly the work of Drusus as the fortress of Aliso in the district of the sources of the Lippe, probably the present village of Elsen, not far from Paderborn,13 is attested to have been so. Moreover, there was the already mentioned canal from the mouth of the Rhine to the Zuider See, and a dyke drawn by Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus through the marshy flat country between the Ems and the lower Rhine—the so–called “long bridges.” Besides, there were detached Roman posts scattered through the whole region; such are subsequently mentioned among the Frisians and the Chauci, and in this sense it may be correct that the Roman garrisons reached as far as the Weser and the Elbe. Lastly, the army encamped in winter, no doubt, on the Rhine; but in summer, even though no expeditions properly so called were undertaken, uniformly in the conquered country, as a rule near Aliso.

Organisation of the province Germany. The Romans, however, did not make mere military arrangements in the newly acquired domain. The Germans were urged, like other provincials, to have law administered to them by the Roman governor, and the summer expeditions of the general gradually developed into the usual judicial circuits of the governor. The accusation and defence of the accused took place in the Latin language; the Roman advocates and legal assessors began, on the right as on the left side of the Rhine, their operations, sorely felt everywhere, but here deeply exasperating to the barbarians, who were unaccustomed to such things. Much was lacking to the full carrying out of the provincial organisation; a formal assessment of taxation, a regulated levy for the Roman army, were not yet thought of. But as the new cantonal union had just been instituted in Gaul in connection with the divine adoration of the monarch there introduced, a similar arrangement was made also in the new Germany. When Drusus consecrated for Gaul the altar of Augustus at Lyons, the Germans last settled on the left bank of the Rhine, the Ubii, were not received into this union; but in their chief place, which, as regards position, was for Germany nearly what Lyons was for the three Gauls, a similar altar for the Germanic cantons was erected, the priesthood of which was, in the year 9, administered by the young Cheruscan prince Segimundus, son of Segestes.

Retirement of Tiberius from the chief command.Political differences, however, in the imperial family broke down or interrupted the full military success. The discord between Tiberius and his stepfather led to the former resigning the command in the beginning of 7486.. The dynastic interest did not allow comprehensive military operations to be entrusted to other generals than princes of the imperial house; and after the death of Agrippa and Drusus, and the retirement of Tiberius, there were no able generals in that house. Certainly in the ten years, when governors with the ordinary powers bore sway in Illyricum and in Germany, the military operations there may not have undergone so complete an interruption as they appear to us to have done, seeing that tradition, with its courtly colouring, does not in its report deal out equal measure to campaigns conducted by, and to those conducted without, princes; but the arrest laid on them was unmistakable, and this itself was a retrogression. Ahenobarbus, who, in consequence of his alliance by marriage with the imperial house—his wife was the daughter of a sister of Augustus—had greater freedom of action than other officers, and who in his Illyrian governorship had crossed the Elbe without encountering resistance, afterwards as governor of Germany reaped no laurels there. Not merely the exasperation, but the courage also, of the Germans was again rising, and in the year 2 the country appears again in revolt, the Cherusci and the Chauci under arms. Meanwhile at the imperial court death had interposed, and the removal of the young sons of Augustus had reconciled the latter and Tiberius.

Tiberius once more commander in chief.Scarcely was this reconciliation sealed by his adoption as a son and proclaimed (4), when Tiberius resumed the work where it had been broken off, and once more in this and in the two following summers (5–6) led the armies over the Rhine. It was a repetition of, and an advance upon, the earlier campaigns. The Cherusci were brought back to allegiance in the first campaign, the Chauci in the second; the Cannenefates, adjoining the Batavi, and not inferior in bravery, the Bructeri, settled in the region of the sources of the Lippe and on the Ems, and various other cantons, submitted, as did also the powerful Langobardi, here first mentioned, dwelling at that time between the Weser and Elbe. The first campaign led over the Weser into the interior; in the second at the Elbe itself the Roman legions confronted the Germanic general levy on the other bank. From the year 4 to 5 the Roman army took up, apparently for the first time, its winter quarters on German soil at Aliso. All this was attained without any considerable conflicts; the circumspect conduct of the war did not break resistance, but made it impossible. This general aimed, not at unfruitful laurels, but at lasting success. The naval expedition, too, was repeated; like the first campaign of Drusus, the last of Tiberius was distinguished by the navigating of the North Sea. But the Roman fleet this time advanced farther; the whole coast of the North Sea, as far as the promontory of the Cimbri, that is, the extremity of Jutland, was explored by it, and it then, sailing up the Elbe, joined the land–army stationed on the latter. The emperor had expressly forbidden the crossing of the river; but the tribes beyond the Elbe—the Cimbri just named, in what is now Jutland, the Charudes to the south of them, the powerful Semnones between the Elbe and the Oder—were brought at least into relation to the new neighbours.

Campaign against Maroboduus.It might have been thought that the goal was reached. But one thing was still wanting to the establishment of the iron ring which was to surround the Great Germany; it was the establishment of a connection between the middle Danube and the upper Elbe—the occupation of the old home of the Boii, which with its mountain–cincture planted itself like a gigantic fortress between Noricum and Germany. The king Maroboduus, of noble Marcomanian lineage, but in his youth by prolonged residence in Rome introduced to its firmer military and political organisation, had after his return home—perhaps during the first campaign of Drusus and the transmigration, thereby brought about, of the Marcomani from the Main to the upper Elbe—not merely raised himself to be prince of his people, but had also moulded his rule not after the loose fashion of the Germanic kings, but, one might say, after the model of the Augustan. Besides his own people, he ruled over the powerful tribe of the Lugii (in what is now Silesia), and the body of his clients must have extended over the whole region of the Elbe, as the Langobardi and the Semnones are described as subject to him. Hitherto he had observed entire neutrality in presence of the other Germans as of the Romans. He gave perhaps to the fugitive enemies of the Romans an asylum in his country, but he did not actively mingle in the strife, not even when the Hermunduri had settlements assigned to them by the Roman governor on Marcomanian territory (p.31), and when the left bank of the Elbe became subject to the Romans. He did not submit to them, but he bore all these occurrences without interrupting, on that account, his friendly relations with the Romans. By this certainly not magnanimous and scarce even so much as prudent policy, he had gained this much, that he was the last to be attacked; after the completely successful Germanic campaigns in the years 4 and 5 his turn came. From two sides—from Germany and Noricum—the Roman armies advanced against the Bohemian mountain–circle; Gaius Sentius Saturninus, advanced up the Main, clearing the dense forests from Spessart to the Fichtelgebirge with axe and fire; while Tiberius in person, starting from Carnuntum, where the Illyrian legions had encamped during the winter of the years 5–6, advanced against the Marcomani. The two armies, amounting together to twelve legions, were even in number so superior as almost to double that of their opponents, whose fighting force was estimated at 70,000 infantry and 4000 horsemen. The cautious strategy of the general seemed on this occasion also to have quite ensured success, when a sudden incident interrupted the farther advance of the Romans.

Dalmato–Pannonian insurrection. The Dalmatian tribes and the Pannonians, at least of the region of the Save, for a short time obeyed the Roman governors; but they bore the new rule with an ever increasing grudge, above all on account of the taxes, to which they were unaccustomed, and which were relentlessly exacted. When Tiberius subsequently asked one of the leaders as to the grounds of the revolt, he answered that it had taken place because the Romans set not dogs and shepherds, but wolves, to guard their flocks. Now the legions from Dalmatia were brought to the Danube, and the men capable of arms were called out, in order to be sent thither to reinforce the armies. These troops made a beginning, and took up arms not for, but against, Rome. Their leader was one of the Daesitiatae (around Serajevo), Bato. The example was followed by the Pannonians, under the leadership of two Breuci, another Bato and Pinnes. All Illyricum rose with unheard of rapidity and unanimity. The number of the insurgent forces was estimated at 200,000 infantry and 9000 horsemen. The levy for the auxiliary troops, which had taken place more especially among the Pannonians to a considerable extent, had diffused more widely a knowledge of Roman warfare, along with the Roman language and even Roman culture. Those who had served as Roman soldiers formed now the nucleus of the insurrection.14 The Roman citizens settled or sojourning in large number in the insurgent regions, the merchants, and above all, the soldiers, were everywhere seized and slain. The independent tribes, as well as those of the provinces, entered into the movement. The princes of the Thracians, entirely devoted to the Romans, certainly brought their considerable and brave bands to the aid of the Roman generals; but from the other bank of the Danube the Dacians, and with them the Sarmatae, broke into Moesia. The whole wide region of the Danube seemed to have conspired to put an abrupt end to the foreign rule.

The insurgents were not disposed to await attack, but planned an invasion of Macedonia, and even of Italy. The danger was serious; the insurgents might, by crossing the Julian Alps, stand in a few days once more before Aquileia and Tergeste—they had not yet forgotten the way thither—and in ten days before Rome, as the emperor himself expressed it in the senate, to make sure at all events of its assent to the comprehensive and urgent military preparations. In the utmost haste new forces were raised, and the towns more immediately threatened were provided with garrisons; in like manner whatever troops could be dispensed with were despatched to the threatened points. The first to arrive at the spot was the governor of Moesia, Aulus Caecina Severus, and with him the Thracian king Rhoemetalces; soon other troops followed from the transmarine provinces. But above all Tiberius was obliged, instead of penetrating into Bohemia, to return to Illyricum. Had the insurgents waited till the Romans were engaged in the struggle with Maroboduus, or had the latter made common cause with them, the position might have been a very critical one for the Romans. But the former broke loose too early, and the latter, faithful to his system of neutrality, condescended just at this time to conclude peace with the Romans on the basis of the status quo. Thus Tiberius had, no doubt, to send back the Rhine–legions, because Germany could not possibly be denuded of troops, but he could unite his Illyrian army with the troops arriving from Moesia, Italy, and Syria, and employ it against the insurgents. In fact the alarm was greater than the danger. The Dalmatians, indeed, broke repeatedly into Macedonia and pillaged the coast as far as Apollonia; but there was no invasion of Italy, and the fire was soon confined to its original hearth.

Nevertheless, the work of the war was not easy; here, as everywhere, the renewed overthrow of the subjects was more laborious than the subjugation itself. Never in the Augustan period was such a body of troops ever united under the same command; already in the first year of the war the army of Tiberius consisted of ten legions along with the corresponding auxiliary forces, and in addition numerous veterans who had again joined of their own accord and other volunteers, together about 120,000 men; later he had fifteen legions united under his banners.15 In the first campaign (6 A.D.) the contest was waged with very varying fortune; the large places, like Siscia and Sirmium, were successfully protected against the insurgents, but the Dalmatian Bato fought as obstinately and in part successfully against the governor of Pannonia, Marcus Valerius Messalla, the orator’s son, as his Pannonian namesake against Aulus Caecina governor of Moesia. The petty warfare above all gave much trouble to the Roman troops. Nor did the following year (7), in which along with Tiberius his nephew the young Germanicus appeared on the scene of war, put an end to the ceaseless conflicts. It was not till the third campaign (8) that the Romans succeeded in subduing in the first instance the Pannonians, chiefly, as it would seem, through the circumstance that their leader, gained over by the Romans, induced his troops all and sundry to lay down their arms at the river Bathinus, and surrendered his colleague in the supreme command, Pinnes, to the Romans, for which he was recognised by them as prince of the Breuci. Punishment indeed soon befell the traitor; his Dalmatian namesake caught him and had him executed, and once more the revolt blazed up among the Breuci; but it was speedily extinguished again, and the Dalmatian was confined to the defence of his own home. There Germanicus and other leaders of division had in this, as in the following year (9), to sustain vehement conflicts in the several cantons; in the latter year the Pirustae (on the borders of Epirus) and the canton to which the leader himself belonged, the Daesitiatae, were subdued, one bravely defended stronghold being reduced after another. Once more in the course of the summer Tiberius himself took the field, and set in motion all his fighting force against the remains of the insurrection. Even Bato, shut up by the Roman army in the strong Andetrium (Much, above Salonae), his last place of refuge, gave up the cause as lost. He left the town, when he could not induce the desperadoes to submit, and yielded himself to the victor, with whom he found honourable treatment; he was relegated as a political prisoner to Ravenna, where he died. Without their leader the troops still for a time continued the vain struggle, till the Romans captured the fort by assault—it is probably this day, the 3d August, that is recorded in the Roman calendar as the anniversary of the victory achieved by Tiberius in Illyricum.

Dacian war of Lentulus.Retribution fell also on the Dacians beyond the Danube. Probably at this time, after the Illyrian war was decided in favour of Rome, Gnaeus Lentulus led a strong Roman army across the Danube, reached as far as the Marisus (Marosch) and emphatically defeated them in their own country, which was then for the first time trodden by a Roman army. Fifty thousand captive Dacians were made to settle in Thrace.

Men of later times termed the “Batonian war” of the years 6–9 the most severe which Rome had to sustain against an external foe since that of Hannibal. It inflicted severe wounds on the Illyrian land; in Italy the joy over the victory was boundless when the young Germanicus brought the news of the decisive success to the capital. The exultation did not last long; almost simultaneously with the news of this success there came to Rome accounts of a defeat, such as reached the ears of Augustus but once in his reign of fifty years—a defeat which was still more significant in its consequences than in itself.

Germanic rising. The state of things in the province of Germany has been already set forth. The recoil which follows on any foreign rule with the inevitableness of a natural event, and which had just set in in the Illyrian land, was in preparation also among the cantons of the middle Rhine. The remnants of the tribes settled immediately on the Rhine were indeed quite discouraged; but those dwelling farther back, especially the Cherusci, Chatti, Bructeri, Marsi, were less injuriously affected and by no means powerless. As always in such cases, there was formed in every canton a party of the compliant friends of the Romans, and a national party preparing in secret a renewed rising. The soul of the latter was a young man of twenty–six years, of the Cheruscan princely house, Arminius son of Sigimer; he and his brother Flavus had received from the emperor Augustus the gifts of Roman citizenship and of equestrian rank,16 and both had fought with distinction as officers in the last Roman campaigns under Tiberius; the brother was still serving in the Roman army and had established a home for himself in Italy. Naturally Arminius also was regarded by the Romans as a man specially to be trusted; the accusations, which his better informed countryman Segestes brought forward against him, availed not to shake this confidence in view of the well–known hostility subsisting between the two. Of the further preparations we have no knowledge; that the nobility and especially the noble youth took the side of the patriots, was a matter of course, and found clear expression in the fact that Segestes’s own daughter, Thusnelda, in spite of the prohibition of her father, married Arminius, while her brother Segimundus and Segestes’s brother Segimer, as well as his nephew Sesithacus, played a prominent part in the insurrection. It had not a wide range, far less than that of the Illyrian rising; it can scarcely in strictness be called a Germanic revolt; the Batavi, the Frisii, the Chauci on the coast took no part in it, as little such of the Suebian tribes as were under Roman rule, still less king Maroboduus; in reality only those Germans rose who had some years previously leagued themselves against Rome, and against whom the offensive of Drusus was primarily directed. The Illyrian rising doubtless promoted the ferment in Germany, but there is no trace of any thread of connection between the two similar and almost contemporary insurrections; had such a connection subsisted the Germans would hardly have waited to strike till the Pannonian rising had been overpowered and the very last strongholds in Dalmatia were surrendering. Arminius was the brave and shrewd, and above all things fortunate, leader in the conflict of despair over the lost national independence—nothing less, but also nothing more.

Varus.It was more the fault of the Romans than the merit of the insurgents, if the plan of the latter succeeded. So far, certainly, the Illyrian war had an effect on Germany. The able generals, and to all appearance also the experienced troops, had been moved from the Rhine to the Danube. The Germanic army was apparently not diminished, but the greatest part of it consisted of new legions formed during the war. Still worse was its position as to leaders. The governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus,17 was, no doubt, the husband of a niece of the emperor, and a man of ill–acquired, but princely, wealth and of princely arrogance, but inert in body and obtuse in mind, and without any military gifts or experience—one of those many Romans in high station who, in consequence of an adherence to the old mixture of administrative functions with those of higher command, wore the general’s scarf after the model of Cicero. He knew not how to spare nor yet to see through the new subjects; oppression and exaction were practised, as had been the wont of his earlier governorship over the patient Syria; the headquarters swarmed with advocates and clients; and in grateful humility the conspirators especially received judgment and justice at his hands, while the net was being drawn more and more closely around the arrogant praetor.

The position of the army was what was then the normal one. There were at least five legions in the province, two of which had their winter–quarters at Mogontiacum, three in Vetera or else in Aliso. The latter had taken up their summer encampment in the year 9 on the Weser. The natural route of communication from the upper Lippe to the Weser leads over the low chain of heights of the Osning and of the Lippe Forest, which separates the valley of the Ems from that of the Weser, through the DÖren defile into the valley of the Werra, which falls into the Weser at Rehme, not far from Minden. Here therefore, approximately, the legions of Varus at that time were encamped. As a matter of course this summer camp was connected with Aliso, the base of the Roman position on the right bank of the Rhine, by a road supplied with depots. The good season of the year came to its close, and they were making ready for the return march, when the news came that a neighbouring canton was in revolt; and Varus resolved, instead of leading back the army by that depot–route, to take a circuit and by the way to bring back the rebels to allegiance.18 So they set out; the army consisted, after numerous reductions, of three legions and nine divisions of troops of the second class, together about 20,000 men.19 When the army had removed to a sufficient distance from its line of communication, and penetrated far enough into the pathless country, the confederates in the neighbouring cantons rose, cut down the small divisions of troops stationed among them, and broke forth on all sides from the defiles and woods against the army of Varus on its march. Arminius and the most notable leaders of the patriots had remained to the last moment at the Roman headquarters to make Varus secure. On the very evening before the day on which the insurrection burst forth they had supped in the general’s tent with Varus; and Segestes, when announcing the impending outbreak of the revolt, had adjured the general to order the immediate arrest of himself as well as of the accused, and to await the justification of his charge by the facts. The confidence of Varus was not to be shaken. Arminius rode away from table to the insurgents, and was next day before the ramparts of the Roman camp. The military situation was neither better nor worse than that of the army of Drusus before the battle at Arbalo, and than had, under similar circumstances, often been the plight of Roman armies. The communications were for the moment lost; the army, encumbered with heavy baggage in a pathless country and at a bad rainy season in autumn, was separated by several days’ march from Aliso; the assailants were beyond doubt far superior in number to the Romans. In such cases it is the solid quality of the troops that is decisive; and, if the decision here for once was unfavourable to the Romans, the result was doubtless mostly due to the inexperience of the young soldiers, and especially to the want of head and of courage in the general. After the attack took place the Roman army continued its march, now beyond doubt in the direction of Aliso, amidst constantly increasing pressure and increasing demoralisation. Even the higher officers failed in part to do their duty; one of them rode away from the field of battle with all the cavalry, and left the infantry to sustain the conflict alone. The first to despair utterly was the general himself; wounded in the struggle, he put himself to death before the matter was finally decided, so early indeed, that his followers still made an attempt to burn the dead body and to withdraw it from being dishonoured by the enemy. A number of the superior officers followed his example. Then, when all was lost, the leader that was left surrendered, and thereby put out of his own power what remained open to these last—an honourable soldier’s death. Thus perished the Germanic army in one of the valleys of the mountain–range that bounds the region of MÜnster, in the autumn of the year 9 A.D.20 The eagles fell—all three of them—into the enemy’s hand. Not a division cut its way through, not even those horsemen who had left their comrades in the lurch; only a few who were isolated and dispersed were able to effect their escape. The captives, especially the officers and the advocates, were fastened to the cross, or buried alive, or bled under the sacrificial knife of the German priests. The heads cut off were nailed as a token of victory to the trees of the sacred grove. Far and wide the land rose against the foreign rule; it was hoped that Maroboduus would join the movement; the Roman posts and roads on the whole right bank of the Rhine fell without further trouble into the power of the victors. Only in Aliso, the brave commandant Lucius Caedicius, not an officer, but a veteran soldier, offered a resolute resistance, and his archers were enabled to make the encampment before the walls so annoying to the Germans, who possessed no weapons for distant fighting, that they converted the siege into a blockade. When the last stores of the besieged were exhausted, and still no relief came, Caedicius broke out one dark night; and this remnant of the army, though burdened with numerous women and children, and suffering severe losses through the assaults of the Germans, in reality ultimately reached the camp at Vetera. Thither also the two legions stationed in Mentz under Lucius Nonius Asprenas had gone on the news of the disaster. The resolute defence of Aliso, and the rapid intervention of Asprenas, hindered the Germans from following up the victory on the left bank of the Rhine, and perhaps the Gauls from rising against Rome.

Tiberius again on the Rhine. The defeat was soon compensated, in so far as the Rhine army was immediately not simply made up to its strength, but considerably reinforced. Tiberius once more took up the supreme command, and though for the year following on the battle of Varus (10) the history of the war had no combats to record, it is probable that arrangements were then made for the occupation of the Rhine–frontier by eight legions, and simultaneously for the division of this command into that of the upper army, with Mentz as its headquarters, and that of the lower with the headquarters at Vetera, an arrangement, as a whole, which thereupon remained normal for centuries. It could not but be expected that this increase of the army of the Rhine would be followed by the energetic resumption of operations on the right bank. The Romano–German conflict was not a conflict between two powers equal in the political balance, in which the defeat of the one might justify the conclusion of an unfavourable peace; it was the conflict of a great civilised and organised state against a brave but, in a political and military aspect, barbarous nation, in which the ultimate result was settled from the first, and an isolated failure in the plan as sketched might as little produce any change as the ship gives up its voyage because a gust of wind drives it out of its course. But it was otherwise. Tiberius, doubtless, went across the Rhine in the following year (11), but this expedition did not resemble the former one. He remained during the summer on that side, and celebrated the emperor’s birthday there, but the army kept to the immediate neighbourhood of the Rhine, and of expeditions on the Weser and on the Elbe there was nothing said. Evidently the object was only to show to the Germans that the Romans still knew how to find the way into their country, and perhaps also to make such arrangements on the right bank of the Rhine as the change of policy required.

Germanicus on the Rhine. The great command embracing both armies was retained, and retained accordingly in the imperial house. Germanicus had already exercised it in the year 11 along with Tiberius; in the following year (12), when the administration of the consulate detained him in Rome, Tiberius commanded alone on the Rhine; with the beginning of the year 13 Germanicus took up the sole command. The state of things was regarded as one of war with the Germans; but these were years of inaction.21 The fiery and ambitious hereditary prince bore with reluctance the constraint imposed on him, and we can understand how, as an officer, he should not forget the three eagles in the hands of the enemy, and how, as the son of Drusus, he should wish to re–erect his structure that had been destroyed. Soon the opportunity presented itself, and he took it. On the 19th August of the year 14, the emperor Augustus died. The first change in the throne of the new monarchy did not pass over without a crisis, and Germanicus had opportunity of proving by deeds to his father that he was disposed to maintain allegiance to him. But at the same time he found in it warrant for resuming, even unbidden, the long–wished–for invasion of Germany; he declared that he had by this fresh campaign to repress the not inconsiderable ferment that had been called forth among the legions upon the change of sovereign. Whether this was a real reason or a pretext we know not, and perhaps he did not himself know. The commandant of the Rhine army could not be debarred from crossing the frontier anywhere, and it always to a certain degree depended on himself how far he should proceed against the Germans. Perhaps too, he believed that he was acting in the spirit of the new ruler, who had at least as much claim as his brother to the name of conqueror of Germany, and whose announced appearance in the camp on the Rhine might, doubtless, be conceived of, as though he were coming to resume the conquest of Germany broken off at the bidding of Augustus.

Renewed offensive.However this may be, the offensive beyond the Rhine began anew. Even in the autumn of the year 14, Germanicus in person led detachments of all the legions at Vetera over the Rhine, and penetrated up the Lippe pretty far into the interior, laying waste the country far and wide, putting to death the natives, and destroying the temples, such as that of Tanfana held in high honour. Those assailed—chiefly Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipes,—sought to prepare the fate of Varus for the crown–prince on his way home; but the attack recoiled before the energetic bearing of the legions. As this advance met with no censure, but on the contrary, thanks and marks of honour were decreed to the general for it, he went farther. In the opening of the year 15 he assembled his main force, in the first instance on the middle Rhine, and advanced in person from Mentz against the Chatti as far as the upper confluents of the Weser, while the lower army, farther to the north, attacked the Cherusci and the Marsi. There was a certain justification for this proceeding in the fact that the Cherusci favourably disposed towards Rome, who had, under the immediate impression of the disaster of Varus, been obliged to join the patriots, were now again at open variance with the much stronger national party, and invoked the intervention of Germanicus. He was actually successful in liberating Segestes, the friend of the Romans, when hard pressed by his countrymen, and at the same time in getting possession of his daughter, the wife of Arminius. Segestes’ brother Segimerus, once the leader of the patriots by the side of Arminius, submitted. The internal dissensions of the Germans once more paved the way for the foreign rule. In the very same year Germanicus undertook his main expedition to the region of the Ems; Caecina marched from Vetera to the upper Ems, while he in person went thither with the fleet from the mouth of the Rhine; the cavalry moved along the coast through the territory of the faithful Frisians. When reunited the Romans laid waste the country of the Bructeri and the whole territory between the Ems and Lippe, and thence made an expedition to the disastrous spot where, six years before, the army of Varus had perished, to erect a monument to their fallen comrades. On their farther advance the Roman cavalry were allured by Arminius and the exasperated hosts of the patriots into an ambush, and would have been destroyed had not the infantry come up and prevented greater mischief. More serious dangers attended the return homeward from the Ems, which followed at first the same routes as the march thither.

Retreat of Caecina.The cavalry arrived at the winter camp uninjured. Seeing that the fleet was not sufficient for conveying the infantry of four legions, owing to the difficulty of navigation—it was about the time of the autumnal equinox—Germanicus disembarked two of them and made them return along the shore; but inadequately acquainted with the ebbing and flowing of the tide at this season of the year, they lost their baggage and ran the risk of being drowned en masse. The retreat of the four legions of Caecina from the Ems to the Rhine resembled exactly that of Varus; indeed, the difficult, marshy country offered perhaps still greater difficulties than the defiles of the wooded hills. The whole mass of natives, with the two princes of the Cherusci, Arminius and his highly esteemed uncle Inguiomerus, at their head, threw themselves on the retreating troops in the sure hope of preparing for them the same fate, and filled the morasses and woods all around. But the old general, experienced in forty years’ of war service, remained cool even in the utmost peril, and kept his despairing and famishing men firmly in hand. Yet even he might not perhaps have been able to avert the mischief but for the circumstance that, after a successful attack during the march, in which the Romans lost a great part of their cavalry and almost the whole baggage, the Germans, sure of victory and eager for spoil, in opposition to Arminius’ advice, followed the other leader, and instead of further surrounding the enemy, attempted directly to storm the camp. Caecina allowed the Germans to come up to the ramparts, but then burst forth from all posterns and gates with such vehemence upon the assailants that they suffered a severe defeat, and in consequence of it the further retreat took place without material hindrance. Those at the Rhine had already given up the army as lost, and were on the point of casting off the bridge at Vetera, to prevent the Germans at least from penetrating into Gaul; it was only the resolute remonstrance of a woman, the wife of Germanicus and daughter of Agrippa, which frustrated the desperate and disgraceful resolve.

The resumption of the subjugation of Germany thus began not quite successfully. The territory between the Rhine and Weser had indeed been again trodden and traversed, but the Romans had no decisive results to show, and the enormous loss in material, particularly in horses, was sorely felt, so that, as in the times of Scipio, the towns of Italy and of the western provinces took part in patriotic contributions to make up for what was lost.

Campaign of the year 16.For the next campaign (16) Germanicus changed his plan of warfare. He attempted the subjugation of Germany on the basis of the North Sea and the fleet, partly because the tribes on the coast, the Batavi, Frisians, and Chauci, adhered more or less to the Romans, partly in order to shorten the marches—in which much time was spent and much loss incurred—from the Rhine to the Weser and Elbe and back again. After he had employed this spring, like the previous one, for rapid advances on the Main and on the Lippe, he, in the beginning of summer, embarked his whole army at the mouth of the Rhine in the powerful transport–fleet of 1000 sail which had meanwhile been made ready, and actually arrived without loss at the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet remained. Thence he advanced, as may be conjectured, up the Ems as far as the mouth of the Haase, and then along the latter as far up as the Werra–valley, and through this to the Weser. By this means the carrying of the army, 80,000 strong, through the Teutoburg Forest, which was attended with great difficulties, particularly as to provisions, was avoided. A secure reserve for supplies was furnished in the camp beside the fleet, and the Cherusci on the right bank of the Weser were assailed in flank instead of in front. Here the Romans encountered the levy en masse of the Germans, again led by the two chiefs of the patriot party, Arminius and Inguiomerus. What warlike resources were at their disposal is shown by the fact that on two occasions, one shortly after the other, in the Cheruscan country—first on the Weser itself and then somewhat farther inland22—they fought in the open field against the whole Roman army, and in both hardly contested the victory. The latter certainly fell to the Romans, and of the German patriots a considerable number were left on the fields of battle. No prisoners were taken, and both sides fought with extreme exasperation. The second tropaeum of Germanicus spoke of the overthrow of all the Germanic tribes between the Rhine and Elbe; the son placed this campaign of his alongside of the brilliant campaigns of his father, and reported to Rome that in the next campaign he should have the subjugation of Germany complete. But Arminius escaped, although wounded, and continued still at the head of the patriots; and an unforeseen mischief marred the success won by arms. On the return home, which the greater part of the legions made by sea, the transport–fleet encountered the autumn storms of the North Sea. The vessels were dashed on all sides upon the islands of the North Sea, and as far as the British coasts. A great portion were destroyed, and those that escaped had for the most part to throw horses and baggage overboard, and to be glad of saving their bare life. The loss of vessels was, as in the times of the Punic war, equivalent to a defeat. Germanicus himself, cast adrift alone with the admiral’s ship on the desolate shore of the Chauci, was in despair at this misfortune, and on the point of seeking his death in that ocean the assistance of which he had at the beginning of this campaign invoked so earnestly and so vainly. Doubtless afterwards the loss of men proved not to be quite so great as it had at first appeared, and some effective blows which the general, on his return to the Rhine, inflicted on the nearest barbarians, raised the sunken courage of the troops. But, taken as a whole, the campaign of the year 16, as compared with that of the preceding year, ended in more brilliant victories doubtless, but also in much more serious loss.

The altered situation.The recall of Germanicus was at the same time the abolition of the command–in–chief of the Rhenish army. The mere division of the command put an end to the conduct of the war as heretofore pursued; the circumstance that Germanicus was not merely recalled, but obtained no successor, was tantamount to ordaining the defensive on the Rhine. Thus the campaign of the year 16 was the last which the Romans waged in order to subdue Germany and to transfer the boundary of the empire from the Rhine to the Elbe. That this was the aim of the campaigns of Germanicus is shown by their very course, and by the trophy that celebrated the frontier of the Elbe. The re–establishment, too, of the military works on the right bank of the Rhine, of the forts of the Taunus, as well as of the stronghold of Aliso and the line connecting it with Vetera, belonged only in part to such an occupation of the right bank as was in keeping with the restricted plan of operations after the battle of Varus; in fact it had a far wider scope. But the designs of the general were not, or not quite, those of the emperor. It is more than probable that Tiberius from the outset allowed rather than sanctioned the enterprises of Germanicus on the Rhine, and it is certain that he wished to put an end to them by recalling him in the winter of 16–17. Beyond doubt, at the same time, a good part of what had been attained was given up, and in particular the garrison was withdrawn from Aliso. As Germanicus, even in the following year, found not a stone left of the memorial of victory erected in the Teutoburg Forest, so the results of his victories disappeared like a flash of lightning into the water, and none of his successors continued the building on this basis.

Motives for the change of policy.If Augustus gave up the conquered Germany as lost after the battle of Varus, and if Tiberius now, when the conquest had once more been taken in hand, ordered it to be broken off, we are well entitled to ask, What motives guided the two notable rulers in this course, and what was the significance of these important events for the general policy of the empire?

The battle of Varus is an enigma, not in a military but in a political point of view—not in its course, but in its consequences. Augustus was not wrong when he demanded back his lost legions, not from the enemy nor from fate, but from the general; it was a disaster such as unskilled leaders of division from time to time bring about for every state. We have difficulty in conceiving that the destruction of an army of 20,000 men without further direct military consequences should have given a decisive turn to the policy at large of a judiciously governed universal empire. And yet the two rulers bore that defeat with a patience as unexampled as it was critical and hazardous for the position of the government in relation to the army and to its neighbours; they allowed the conclusion of peace with Maroboduus, which, beyond doubt, was meant to be in strictness a mere armistice, to become withal definitive, and made no further attempt to get the upper valley of the Elbe into their hands. It must have been no easy thing for Tiberius to see the collapse of the great structure begun in concert with his brother, and after the latter’s death almost completed by himself; the energetic zeal with which, as soon as he had again entered on the government, he took up the Germanic war which he had begun ten years ago, enables us to measure what this self–denial must have cost him. If, nevertheless, the self–denial was persevered in not merely by Augustus, but also after his death by Tiberius himself, there is no other reason to be found for it than that they recognised the plans pursued by them for twenty years for the changing of the boundary to the north as incapable of execution, and the subjugation and mastery of the region between the Rhine and the Elbe appeared to them to transcend the resources of the empire.

The Elbe frontier.If the previous boundary of the empire ran from the middle Danube up to its source and to the upper Rhine, and thence down that river, it was, at all events, materially shortened and improved by being shifted to the Elbe, which in its head–waters approaches the middle Danube, and to its course throughout; in which case, probably, besides the evident military gain, there came into view also the political consideration that the keeping of the great commands as far as possible remote from Rome and Italy was one of the leading maxims of the Augustan policy, and an army of the Elbe would hardly have played such a part in the further development of Rome as the armies of the Rhine but too soon undertook. The preliminary conditions to this end, the overthrow of the Germanic patriot–party and of the Suebian king in Bohemia, were no easy tasks; nevertheless they had already once stood on the verge of succeeding, and with a right conduct of the war these results could not fail to be reached. But it was another question whether, after the institution of the Elbe frontier, the troops could be withdrawn from the intervening region; this question had been raised in a very serious way for the Roman government by the Dalmato–Pannonian war. If the mere impending movement of the Roman Danube–army into Bohemia had called forth a popular rising in Illyricum, that was only put down by the exertion of all their military resources after a four years’ conflict, this wide region might not be left to itself either at the time or for many years to come. Similar, doubtless, was the state of the case on the Rhine. The Roman public was wont, indeed, to boast that the state held all Gaul in subjection by means of the garrison at Lyons 1200 strong; but the government could not forget that the two great armies on the Rhine not merely warded off the Germans, but also had a very material bearing on the Gallic cantons that were not at all distinguished by submissiveness. Stationed on the Weser or even on the Elbe, they would not have rendered this service in equal measure; and to keep both the Rhine and the Elbe occupied was beyond their power.

And its abandonment.Thus Augustus might well come to the conclusion that with the strength of the army as it then stood—considerably increased indeed of late, but still far below the measure of what was really requisite—that great regulation of the frontier was not practicable; the question was thus converted from a military one into one of internal policy, and especially into one of finance. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius ventured to increase still further the expense of the army. We may blame them for not doing so. The paralysing double blow of the Illyrian and the Germanic insurrections with their grave disasters, the great age and the enfeebled vigour of the ruler, the increasing disinclination of Tiberius for initiating any fresh and great undertaking, and above all any deviation from the policy of Augustus, doubtless co–operated to induce this result, and did so, perhaps, to the injury of the state. By the demeanour of Germanicus, not to be approved but easily to be explained, we perceive how keenly the soldiers and the youth felt the abandonment of the new province of Germany. In the poor attempt to retain, at least nominally, the lost Germany with the help of the two German cantons on the left of the Rhine, and in the ambiguous and uncertain words with which Augustus himself in his account of the case lays or forgoes claim to Germany as Roman, we discern how perplexed was the attitude of the government towards public opinion in this matter. The grasping at the frontier of the Elbe was a mighty, perhaps a too bold stroke, undertaken possibly by Augustus—who did not generally soar so high—only after years of hesitation, and doubtless not without the determining influence of the younger stepson who was in closest intercourse with him. But to retrace too bold a step is, as a rule, not a mending of the mistake, but a second mistake. The monarchy had need of warlike honour unstained and of unconditional warlike success, in quite another way than the former burgomaster–government; the absence of the numbers 17, 18, and 19—never filled up since the battle of Varus—in the roll of regiments, was little in keeping with military prestige, and the peace with Maroboduus, on the basis of the status quo, could not be construed by the most loyal rhetoric into a success. The assumption that Germanicus began those far–reaching enterprises in opposition to the strict orders of his government is forbidden by his whole political position; but the reproach that he made use of his double position, as supreme commander of the first army of the Rhine and as future successor to the throne, in order to carry out at his own hand his politico–military plans, is one from which he can as little be exempted as the emperor from the no less grave reproach of having started back perhaps from the forming, or perhaps only from the clear expression and the sharp execution, of his own resolves. If Tiberius at least allowed the resumption of the offensive, he must have felt how much was to be said for a more vigorous policy; he may perhaps, as over–considerate people do, have left the decision, so to speak, to destiny, till at length the repeated and severe misfortunes of the crown–prince once more justified the policy of despair. It was not easy for the government to bid an army halt which had brought back two of the three lost eagles; but it was done. Whatever may have been the real and the personal motives, we stand here at a turning–point in national destinies. History, too, has its flow and its ebb; here, after the tide of Roman sway over the world has attained its height, the ebb sets in. Northward of Italy the Roman rule had for a few years reached as far as the Elbe; since the battle of Varus its bounds were the Rhine and the Danube. A legend—but an old one—relates that the first conqueror of Germany, Drusus, on his last campaign at the Elbe, saw a vision of a gigantic female figure of Germanic mould, that called to him in his own language the word “Back!” The word was not spoken, but it was fulfilled.

Germans against Germans.Nevertheless the defeat of the Augustan policy, as the peace with Maroboduus and the sufferance of the Teutoburg disaster may well be termed, was hardly a victory of the Germans. After the battle with Varus the hope must doubtless have passed through the minds of the best, that a certain union of the nation would accrue from the glorious victory of the Cherusci and their allies, and from the retiring of the enemy in the west as in the south. Perhaps in these very crises the feeling of unity may have dawned on the Saxons and Suebians formerly confronting each other as strangers. The fact that the Saxons sent from the battle–field the head of Varus to the king of the Suebians, can be nothing but the savage expression of the thought that the hour had come for all Germans to throw themselves in joint onset upon the Roman empire, and thus to secure the frontier and the freedom of their land, as they could alone be secured, by striking down the hereditary foe in his own home. But the cultured man and the politic king accepted the gift of the insurgents only in order to forward the head to the emperor Augustus for burial; he did nothing for, but also nothing against, the Romans, and persevered unshaken in his neutrality. Immediately after the death of Augustus there were fears at Rome of the Marcomani invading Raetia, but apparently without cause; and when Germanicus thereupon resumed the offensive against the Germans from the Rhine, the mighty king of the Marcomani looked on inactive. This policy of finesse or of cowardice dug its own grave amidst a Germanic world fiercely excited, and drunk with patriotic successes and hopes. The more remote Suebian tribes but loosely connected with the empire, the Semnones, Langobardi, and Gothones, declared off from the king, and made common cause with the Saxon patriots; it is not improbable that the considerable forces, which were evidently at the disposal of Arminius and Inguiomerus in the conflicts with Germanicus, flowed to them in great part from these quarters.

Fall of Maroboduus.Soon afterwards, when the Roman attack was suddenly broken off, the patriots turned (17) to assail Maroboduus, perhaps to assail the kingly office in general, at least as the latter administered it on the Roman model.23 But even among themselves divisions had set in; the two nearly related Cheruscan princes, who in the last struggles had led the patriots, if not victoriously, at any rate bravely and honourably, and had hitherto constantly fought shoulder to shoulder, no longer stood together in this war. The uncle Inguiomerus no longer tolerated his being second to his nephew, and at the outbreak of the war passed to the side of Maroboduus. Thus matters came to a decisive battle between Germans and Germans, nay, between the same tribes; for Suebi as well as Cherusci fought in both armies. Long the conflict wavered; both armies had learned from the Roman tactics, and on both sides the passion and the exasperation were alike. Arminius did not achieve a victory properly so called, but his antagonist left to him the field of battle; and, as Maroboduus seemed to have fared the worst, those who had hitherto adhered to him left him, and he found himself confined to his own kingdom. When he asked for Roman aid against his overpowerful countrymen, Tiberius reminded him of his attitude after the battle of Varus, and replied that now the Romans in turn would remain neutral. His fate was rapidly decided. In the very following year (18) he was surprised in his royal abode itself by a prince of the Gothones, Catualda, to whom he had formerly given personal offence, and who had thereupon revolted from him with the other non–Bohemian Suebi; and, abandoned by his own people, he with difficulty made his escape to the Romans, who granted to him the asylum which he sought—he died many years afterwards, as a Roman pensioner, at Ravenna.

End of Arminius.Thus the opponents as well as the rivals of Arminius had become refugees, and the Germanic nation looked to none else than to him. But this greatness was his danger and his destruction. His own countrymen, especially his own clan, accused him of going the way of Maroboduus and of desiring to be not merely the first, but also the lord and the king of the Germans—whether with reason or not, and whether, if he wished this, he did not perhaps wish what was right, who can say? The result was a civil war between him and these representatives of popular freedom; two years after the banishment of Maroboduus he too, like Caesar, fell by the dagger of nobles of republican sentiments near to his person. His wife Thusnelda and his son born in captivity, Thumelicus, on whom he had never set eyes, marched at the triumph of Germanicus (26th May, 17) among the other Germans of rank, in chains to the Capitol; the old Segestes was for his fidelity to the Romans provided with a place of honour, whence he might look on at the public entry of his daughter and his grandson. They all died within the Roman empire; with Maroboduus the wife and son of his antagonist met in the exile of Ravenna. When Tiberius remarked at the recall of Germanicus that there was no need to wage war against the Germans, and that they would of themselves take care to do what was requisite for Rome, he knew his adversaries; in this, at all events, history has pronounced him right. But to the high–spirited man who, at the age of six–and–twenty, had released his Saxon home from the Italian foreign rule, who thereafter had been general as well as soldier in a seven years’ struggle for that freedom regained, who had staked not merely person and life, but also wife and child for his nation, to fall at the age of thirty–seven by an assassin’s hand—to this man his people gave, what it was in their power to give, an eternal monument in heroic song.