Beyond Rome and Italy stretched the empire. In the east it was still bounded by client kingdoms. In the civil wars they had been loyal to Antony, and one of Augustus’ first tasks had been to tour the east gaining their allegiance for himself (22-19 Bc). They were gradually to be absorbed into the empire itself. Further east, beyond direct Roman control, was Parthia, the only state that could meet Rome as an equal.
The disastrous invasions of Crassus and Antony had shown how formidable an enemy the Parthians could be. It was one of Augustus’ major achievements that he came to terms with Parthia, bullying her into returning the captured Roman standards in 20 Bc, and then setting up Armenia as an independent buffer state between the two empires. The event was trumpeted throughout the empire. A large issue of denarii bore the image of a kneeling Parthian offering up the coveted standards. On the cuirass of the Prima Porta statue the Parthian king himself is shown offering back the standard to a figure in military dress and the surrounding motifs suggest a world united in peace thanks to the dominance of Rome.
In the west Roman control was still limited. Some areas such as Spain were still unpacified, even though the Romans had nominally controlled the peninsula for 200 years. Others such as Gaul still had not been consolidated for tax purposes. All this was put in hand. Spain was pacified with great brutality while Caesar’s Gallic conquests were consolidated into three provinces. The southern borders of the province of Africa were also stabilized, an important achievement in an area that, along with Italy, Sicily, and Egypt, supplied most of the grain of Rome.
In the north the borders of the empire, from the Balkans to Germany, had never been properly defined. It was here the empire was most vulnerable. The tribes, some of whom were Celtic, some German, and one, the Sarmatians, Asiatic in origin, were fiercely independent and able to offer determined resistance to the Romans. The dilemma, one that was to haunt Roman policy-making for four centuries, was whether to try and subdue them or whether to exclude them from the empire by a defended frontier. In 17 or 16 BC German tribes spilled over the Rhine, which had marked the limit of Caesar’s conquests. Augustus himself went north to rally the defence and so began years of fighting along the borders. In 16 and 15 BC the Alps were subdued to secure Roman control along the Danube and allow better communication between the Rhine and the east of the empire. An initial pacification of the Balkan tribes took place between 12 and 9, with the eventual formation of the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia. Meanwhile Roman armies were advancing across the Rhine towards the Elbe, which was reached about 9 Bc.
However, Roman control was not as complete as it seemed. A great revolt broke out in Pannonia in ad 6 that took four years of hard fighting to subdue. (The historian Suetonius believed it was the toughest war Rome had had to fight since the great struggle with Carthage.) Just as the fighting ended (ad 9) a Roman commander, Varus, who was organizing tax collection in what is now north-western Germany with three legions to support him, was ambushed and massacred with all his men. It was an appalling humiliation and the news shook Augustus more than any other of his reign. The legions were never replaced, their numbers left unused. (One of Tacitus’ most graphic descriptions is of Roman armies raiding in the area seven years later coming across the whitened bones of the dead soldiers still lying in the forest. The site of the disaster, in the Teutoberger Wald, is now marked by a monument.) Retreat had to be made to the Rhine, where no less than eight legions were left stationed to guard what now had to be accepted as a permanent border. In a message left at his death Augustus warned his successors not to try to expand further. With the exceptions of the conquest of Britain (from ad 43) and Dacia (finally in 105-6), and the absorption of client states, no further permanent additions were to be made to the empire.
World History
