The Romans usually talked in terms of conquest and defined their power as stretching potentially without limit, so that no peoples were truly independent. Nevertheless they occasionally recognized the idea of the army acting as a shield protecting the subject peoples under their charge, and the territorial integrity of the areas they ruled.5 Even if this view is wishful thinking, it does express an ideal that apparently could be endorsed and appreciated by contemporaries, and when provincial communities celebrated deliverance from physical danger they usually honoured the emperor, sometimes indeed mentioning a military unit.6 By contrast, it was a serious criticism sometimes directed against unpopular emperors that they had failed to protect Roman territory. Suetonius denounced Tiberius for his negligent foreign policy, claiming (quite falsely) that the emperor had
Permitted Roman provinces to be overrun ‘to the great dishonour of the empire and no less to its danger’.7
In the first two centuries ad if the army suffered a serious defeat there was no strategic reserve immediately available and no system of linear defence. Once an invader had crossed the Rhine or the Danube or the Euphrates then the communities in the remoter provinces would be the first to suffer. Many cities had no defences or military forces of their own, and had to rely on the legions for protection. The shock of defeat brought unexpected fears even to the Romans themselves. In the brief memoir of his achievements, the Res Gestae, Augustus makes no mention of the disastrous defeat of Quinctilius Varus in Germany.8 But public business was suspended, there was a period of national mourning, and the emperor resorted to emergency recruitment since he feared that Italy itself might be under threat. ‘Augustus. . . mourned greatly. . . also because of his fear for the German and Gallic provinces, and especially because he expected that the enemy would march against Italy and against Rome itself.’9
Domitian’s reign brought a flurry of military activity, including the extension of Roman control in the valley of the River Neckar between the Rhine and the Danube, and two imperial triumphs; but there were also serious incursions into Roman territory. In 84/5 the Dacians swept into Moesia, defeating and killing the governor Oppius Sabinus, while in 86 the praetorian prefect Cornelius Fuscus and his army were lost. Then in 92 the Marcomanni and Quadi attacked Pannonia, and in the fighting an entire legion was wiped out along with its commander.10 Tacitus speaks of armies lost through the rashness or cowardice of their leaders, and officers and their cohorts stormed and captured; he goes on: ‘It was no longer the frontier of Roman power and the river bank that were in jeopardy, but the bases of the legions and the preservation of the Empire’.11 He is certainly exaggerating because of his hostility to Domitian, but these were clearly substantial military setbacks, and we may guess at the loss and devastation among provincial communities.
The most serious and prolonged crisis and threat to Roman military power occurred in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, when tribes on the Rhine and the Danube repeatedly threatened Roman territory. Dio observed: ‘I admire him particularly for the very reason that amid unparalleled and extraordinary difficulties he both himself survived and saved the empire.’12 After a Roman defeat in 170 the Marcomanni and Quadi crossed the Julian Alps and swept into Italy, destroying Opitergium (Oderzo) and putting Aquileia under siege.13 The provinces of Noricum, Pannonia and Upper Moesia will have suffered most heavily in this incursion, and then there was a further invasion by the Costoboci into Lower Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia, which penetrated to central Greece (Achaea).To make matters worse, in 171, Baetica was pillaged by Moorish rebels who crossed the Straits of Gibraltar.14 Although there is little detailed evidence, it is likely that many towns and communities in the provinces were destroyed, damaged or threatened before the invaders were repulsed. In Pannonia there are signs of widespread devastation; perhaps up to 150,000 people were taken into captivity, while cattle and movable possessions were seized; there are coin hoards and burnt layers in forts and civil settlements, indicating panic and violent conflict.15 In Noricum there is evidence of the destruction of civilian and military sites, particularly in the east of the province in 170 to 171, and there are also coin hoards from this period. Even after partial recovery the province continued to be afflicted by the plague.16 There are also signs of the turmoil in a legal decision by Marcus: ‘In respect of work which is carried out on city walls or gates or public areas, or if city walls are to be constructed, the divine Marcus replied that when the governor of a province is approached he must consult the emperor.’17 This suggests a widespread building of emergency defences by communities who felt themselves to be in imminent danger. For example, Salonae, chief city in Dalmatia and an important link on the sea route from the Danube area to Italy, was fortified in ad 170 by detachments from the II and III Italica legions, recently recruited by Marcus.18Work was also going on to strengthen the defences at Philippopolis in Thrace.19 Some building work was confused and disorganized, as we see from the wall built to defend part of Athens after the invasion of the Heruli in ad 268, which incorporated substantial fragments from other destroyed buildings.20
On other less well documented occasions it is likely that the physical and psychological effects of warfare and foreign invasion were experienced by Roman provincial communities, not to mention the depredations of civil wars, internal rebellions and banditry. At any time the movement of peoples over whom the Romans had no control could upset the settled security of the provinces. Arrian, who was governor of Cappadocia c. ad 135, had to mobilize his forces to confront the Alani, a nomadic people from the northern Pontic region who tried to cross the Caucasus.21 A brief comment in Dio reveals that during the reign of Commodus tribesmen stormed across Hadrian’s Wall, annihilated a Roman force and caused a great deal of damage in the province.22 Under Severus Alexander in ad 230, the newly established Persian monarchy overran Mesopotamia and threatened Cappadocia and Syria. The emperor launched a major campaign in 232, which, although inconclusive, enabled the Romans to recover Mesopotamia. There was, however, little time to celebrate before news arrived that German tribes had crossed the Rhine and the Danube and were devastating the empire, overrunning the garrisons on the river banks, and also the cities and villages, and threatening the Illyrians, who were next door to Italy.23 Once again, albeit briefly, we see how quickly the apparently secure territorial control of Rome could be disrupted, with dire consequences for ordinary people.
In the third century for a time Rome’s authority was severely challenged by persistent political instability, frequent civil wars, a series of invasions by foreign peoples, and the virtual secession of part of the empire in Gaul and Palmyra.24 In these years the emperor Gordian III may have died of his wounds in ad 244 after defeat in the war against Persia,25 the emperor Decius was killed in battle against the Goths in ad 251, while Valerian was captured as the Persian king Shapur overran Mesopota:mia in ad 260. He was to die in captivity. It is difficult to discover how far these turbulent events affected local communities. Spain suffered invasions from the Moors and from people across the Rhine, and in Pannonia there is the evidence of coin hoarding, suggesting violence and perhaps panic, and also the emergence of fortified villas and estates. In Noricum the important town of Lauriacum (Lorsch), the base of legion II Italica, was burnt in ad 235/236, and there was further serious trouble later. In Gaul there are coin hoards and the evidence of burnt layers, but these are apparently sited largely along main roads.26
Civil wars conducted entirely within Roman territory by trained Roman soldiers could be especially destructive, not least because there was often an additional motive of revenge, and sometimes of inter-city rivalry as communities supported their own favourite contenders for the purple. Sometimes they had no choice. Tacitus gives a masterly description of the social, economic and psychological effects of the civil wars of 68 to 69 on the people of Italy and the provinces. He notes the greed and licence of the soldiers once the normal restraints of discipline were removed, and the ambitious men of note who lurked in the background unscrupulously exploiting them.27 The hostility of the troops to local communities increased as they dreamed of sacking cities, plundering the countryside and ransacking private homes.28 At Divodurum (Metz) the army of Vitellius massacred 4000 of the population for no good reason. After this, as the column of soldiers approached, the whole population of cities came out to meet it begging for mercy, as women and children grovelled before the soldiers along the way, securing peace in the absence of war, as Tacitus puts it.29 Othonian troops on a raiding mission in Liguria in north-west Italy ‘behaved as if they were dealing with enemy territory and cities, and burned, devastated and plundered them with a ferocity made more awful by the total lack of precautions everywhere against such a threat’. During the sack of the town of Albintimilium and the surrounding countryside, the mother of Agricola, Tacitus’ father-in-law, was murdered on her estate.30 This kind of destruction was repeated throughout Italy during the victorious Vitellian march on Rome, as soldiers with local knowledge picked out prosperous farms and rich landowners for plunder. There were over 60,000 soldiers with Vitellius as well as many camp followers, and the land was stripped bare.31 Not even Rome itself was spared. The conflict between the Vitellians and Flavians saw the Capitoline temple of Jupiter burned to the ground, and when the Flavian forces eventually captured the city there was fierce fighting cheered on by some of the plebs.32
There were other rebellions, notably those of L. Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus, governor of Dalmatia under Claudius (ad 42), L. Antonius Saturninus, governor of Upper Germany under Domitian (ad 89), and C. Avidius Cassius, governor of Syria under Marcus Aurelius (ad 175). These did not lead to a general conflagration, and the effects were probably confined to the immediate vicinity. However, the prolonged conflict that lasted from 193 to 197 involving Septimius Severus, governor of Pannonia, Pescennius Niger, governor of Syria, and Clodius Albinus, governor of Britain, was particularly destructive because all three men commanded large armies in important provinces and because the war went on for so long. Those who supported the wrong side incurred the winner’s displeasure, and some communities were heavily fined. The intensity of the campaign and its effect on local communities are best seen in the case of Byzantium, which obstinately continued to support Niger long after his cause had been defeated, and sustained a siege of three years in which the defenders were reduced by privation to desperate measures, apparently including cannibalism. On the surrender of the city, soldiers and magistrates were executed, many citizens had their property confiscated, the great walls were demolished, and the whole community was humiliated by being reduced to the status of a village and included under the jurisdiction of its great rival, Perinthus.33 The civil war ended in ad 197 with the defeat of Albinus at Lugdunum, the sacking and burning of the city, and a series of reprisals against his supporters.34 But the case of Perinthus demonstrates that some communities profited from civil war - a period of instability during which the normal restraints of diplomacy, established prestige and the status quo were removed. Similarly there were rewards for soldiers, both money and promotions, and honours and advancement for their commanders in the political repercussions of military conflict.
Internal revolts by subdued peoples may have been relatively common. They were not necessarily recognized or reported as wars, or were perhaps concealed by an emperor.35 For example, under Tiberius the Frisii, a people on the east bank of the Rhine outside the Roman province, who had been paying a kind of taxation to Rome, revolted because of the rapacity of the collectors. An attempt to chastise the tribe did not go well, and ‘rather than appoint a commander for the war, Tiberius suppressed the losses’.36 But some native revolts developed into full-scale warfare that required substantial military action by Rome and attracted the attention of historians. So, in the early first century, the province of Africa was threatened by the daring raids of Tacfarinas, who had deserted from a Roman auxiliary unit. Local communities suffered social and economic disruption from the campaign of burning and pillage, which brought the destruction of villages and enormous loot. It took seven years of intermittent warfare before he was finally suppressed.37 We have already seen the appalling cost in life and property of the rebellion of Boudicca in Britain in ad 60 to 61.38 Elsewhere there is sometimes only a tantalizingly brief account of a potentially serious uprising. For example, there was a disturbance in Egypt in 172 instigated by the so-called Boukoloi, probably in fact the population of the Nile Delta. Under the leadership of a priest their revolt spread to the rest of Egypt and might well have brought the capture of Alexandria if the governor of Syria had not intervened.39
These revolts, though significant, cannot match the Jewish insurrections, sustained by a highly resilient racial, cultural and religious identity. There were two serious attempts to re-establish Jewish independence in ad 66 to 70 and 132 to 135, and Rome had to make a huge commitment in men and resources to suppress them. The consequences for Judaea were disastrous, with enormous loss of life and destruction of property. Furthermore, in the aftermath of Trajan’s campaigns against Parthia the Jews of the Diaspora rose in revolt, first in Egypt and north Africa in ad 115, and then in Mesopotamia in 116. There were sectarian massacres by Jews and Greeks, and possibly over one million people died; in Cyprus the Greeks were massacred by the victorious Jews, and the city of Salamis was annihilated with the loss of 250,000 lives. The prefect of Egypt, M. Rutilius Lupus, was for a time besieged in Alexandria.40
The jurist Ulpian, writing in the third century, said: ‘Enemies (hostes) are those against whom the Roman people have formally declared war, or who themselves have declared war against the Roman people; others are called robbers or bandits.’41 Brigandage, which was often associated with piracy, was seemingly more or less endemic in the Roman world throughout the first three centuries ad. Often the effects of banditry could be limited, in that bandits tended to make rapid raids in order to steal cattle, movable possessions, liquor and stored food. But in some areas banditry was a persistent scourge, notably in Cilicia and Isauria, Judaea, Gaul at times, Sardinia and Egypt.42 There were also serious problems in Numidia and Mauretania in the reign of Antoninus Pius.43 Even Italy was not immune. In the reign of Septimius Severus the notorious bandit Bulla was at large for two years with his robber band of about 600 men, even though the emperor himself took an interest and sent large numbers of soldiers to hunt him down. Eventually he was betrayed by his mistress and was thrown to the beasts in the arena.44
In general, brigandage was not specifically nationalistic or anti-Roman, but embraced men disaffected with the greed and oppression of Roman officials, the destitute, escaped slaves, fugitives, people displaced by enemy incursions, and also army deserters. For example, the serious disturbances faced by Commodus in Gaul were apparently instigated by Maternus, a deserter who led a band of similar renegade soldiers.45 Whole communities suffered, especially travellers, since roads were vulnerable, and probably most often the poor since they were least able to protect themselves.46 Only in Judaea does the persistent banditry described by the abundant literary sources seem to be exceptional, in that to some extent it was ideologically motivated by Jewish religious and nationalistic beliefs, and sometimes Romans were specifically the targets.47
The government took vigorous steps to repress bandits. Sometimes local forces were used, such as village guards under the command of the irenarch, a local official with minor responsibility for law and order, and border or mountain guards.48 But often the Roman army was deployed to deal with bandits, supported if necessary by the imperial navy. These fuH-scale military operations were sometimes accompanied by the building of watchtowers and guard posts to supervise main roads.49 An inscription from Intercisa in Pannonia records the site of an army watchtower constructed in the reign of Commodus for surveillance over ‘places liable to clandestine forays by bandits’.50 Although tough military measures might be effective in the short term, the problem was that brigands could often retreat to mountain strongholds, which would have required a disproportionate effort to storm. Doubtless they had sympathizers among the local people who could help them to slip away. Thus military action had to be repeated, and this in itself also involved disruption and probably expense for local communities. It needs to be emphasized that for ordinary people in some regions day-to-day life remained perilous despite the presence of the Roman army. Of the numerous inscriptions attesting the fate of individuals who encountered brigands, one from Viminacium (Kostolac) must stand as an example. It tells how a civilian ‘died a horrible death at the hands of brigands’.51
World History
