Emperors after Augustus, many of whom lacked his accumulated prestige, perhaps had to work harder to maintain public interest in foreign affairs. Yet conquest continued, though admittedly at a slower rate, and a fairly wide cross-section of senators continued to participate at some level of military command and to hold most of the senior governorships until well into the third century ad. It seems that many influential Romans remained interested in warfare, military life and martial glory, and at least affected to admire these qualities and activities.60 Opinion about foreign peoples, warfare, diplomacy, the welfare of Rome, and the security and self-interest of the upper classes does not seem to have changed much over the years. Emperors and their advisers in government will have interacted with this by turning towards the same kind of publicity and opinion management used by Augustus. Appian, a Greek and a Roman citizen who received the status of procurator from Antoninus Pius, wrote about the peoples whom the Romans had encountered and subdued on their way to imperial power. His views on the rationale of Roman imperialism are very much like those of Strabo:
Possessing the best parts of the land and sea, in the main they intelligently choose to consolidate their rule rather than extend it endlessly over destitute and unproductive barbarian peoples. I have seen some of them in Rome negotiating and offering themselves as subjects, but the emperor would not accept men who were going to be of no use to him.61
Similarly, Pausanias, a Greek writer who lived c. ad 150 and who produced a guide to the most important historical sites in Greece, describes in pragmatic terms Roman penetration into Thrace and the land of the Celts:
All Thrace is in the hands of the Romans. But they have deliberately ignored that part of the Celtic country that they think useless because of its extreme cold and the poverty of the soil; but whatever they [the Celts] have that is worth getting, the Romans own.62
On the other hand, Florus, celebrating the military accomplishments of the Roman people, stated that it was just as splendid and honourable to acquire provinces which brought great titles to imperial greatness, though they served no useful purpose, as it was to acquire rich and powerful provinces (1.47.4-5).63 Even those left outside the empire nevertheless appreciated the greatness of Rome and revered the Roman people as conquerors of the world (2.34.61). Florus contemptuously dismisses many peoples subdued by Augustus as savages who could not recognize the value of peace (that is, Roman domination); they were mere raiders and bandits of a ferocious and brute courage. He makes no attempt to distinguish differing policy objectives; those who resisted are simply to be annihilated (2.21-34). He also believed that further military action was eminently desirable. After Augustus, so he claims, for almost 200 years, emperors were militarily inactive, and the Roman people, as if growing old, lost its strength; but under Trajan, against aH expectation, youthful vigour was restored (1, Preface 8).
Florus illustrates the limited and unanalytical response of some reasonably intelligent and literate Romans to government policy on conquest and warfare, and has an unthinking pride in Roman imperial achievement. He also agrees with writers like Appian and Pausanias in his contempt for peoples outside Graeco-Roman culture. Naturally Romans and their Greek apologists would have agreed that all their wars were justified. Augustus had summed up the violent and bloodstained clearing of the Alpine tribes with this boast: ‘I secured the pacification of the Alps... yet without waging an unjust war on any people.’64
But what about historians of Rome who came from the government class, especially those who had held high office, notably Tacitus and Cassius Dio? Did the ruling classes in the first and second centuries ad have an idea of the ideology of war, the rights and wrongs of fighting and diplomacy, and any understanding of other peoples and how they should be treated? How did they react to imperial publicity, and what qualities in an emperor were particularly valued? Neither Tacitus nor Cassius Dio makes any attempt to explain Roman conquests or military activity. They merely relate what happened with occasional comments. Vital war decisions may be satisfactorily explained on the grounds that the emperor wanted to acquire military glory or to protect the Roman concept of military honour or to expiate the disgrace of a mutiny or to keep family harmony.65 There is no discussion of the moral dynamics of empire or the treatment of foreign peoples beyond occasional comments on Roman misgovernment. Dio, who had been governor of Upper Pannonia, sneers at the Pannonian people, who had ‘the most miserable existence of all mankind’; they suffered poor soil and climate, produced no olives or decent wine, and ‘possessed nothing that makes an honourable life worthwhile’.66 But he does not question Roman occupation of their territory. In Tacitus’ opinion the British were barbarians and the climate appalling, though Britain had enough precious metals to make it worth conquering. He believed that it was only imperial jealousy that prevented his father-in-law Agricola from conquering the entire island. In Agricola’s opinion Ireland, too, could have been added to the empire with a single legion, and no further considerations were necessary.67 Tacitus also wrote an ethnography of the German tribes seen through Roman eyes, in which he recognized that they had good qualities. Indeed, some of their practices could be favourably compared to the dubious moral climate of Rome, but one consequence of this was that they were potentially a threat and therefore further conquest was desirable. As he reviewed Roman wars with the Germans, Tacitus wistfully commented: ‘How long it is taking to conquer Germany.’68
When it suited Tacitus he was belligerent and set no limit to the advance of Roman arms. He berates Domitian for Rome’s military setbacks that placed the very maintenance of the empire in jeopardy.69 In the Annals he laments ‘his narrow and inglorious task’ in recounting the history of the early principate, with the empire sunk in torpor and the emperor Tiberius uninterested in territorial expansion; foreign potentates could mock him as old and unwarlike.70 Yet Tacitus appreciated that in certain circumstances diplomacy was valuable and also a careful calculation of Rome’s self-interest.71
Dio, although he never questioned the wisdom of the empire, also saw the value of a peaceful solution in some cases, and in general tends to be critical of major wars and annexation of new territory.72 Thus Trajan’s campaigns in Parthia are branded as being simply an expression of the emperor’s ‘desire for glory’, and the invasion of Britain launched by Claudius is clearly seen as a show-piece demonstrating the emperor’s military valour.73 Dio’s comments on the annexation of Mesopotamia by Septimius Severus offer a rare analysis of both sides of a debate about the wisdom of territorial aggrandizement.74 Dio has sensible objections - the annexation was provocative, expensive, and ultimately destructive because it led to more wars - but it is unlikely that he felt strongly enough to pursue the matter. Indeed, most upper-class Romans were probably happy to accept the empire and to agree that war should be made on its behalf. They had little concern with what happened to other peoples. Dio of Prusa, a well-connected Greek philosopher and rhetorician, was a lone voice, as far as we know, in criticizing (in a speech before Trajan) war waged merely for the sake of glory.75 On another occasion he visited the Danube frontier and witnessed the preparations for a campaign in Dacia. He said that he saw one side fighting for empire and power, and the other for freedom and their native land, though he makes no moral judgement on their motivation, and indeed has little to say on the morality of contemporary warfare.76
The question of publicity, propaganda and the winning of support for imperial policy is bound up with public opinion, and in particular the views of senators and equestrians on the qualities an ideal emperor should possess. How much did they admire and yearn for a great conqueror? Here the case of Trajan and Hadrian is instructive. Trajan was popular with senators, and the ritual acclamation of the senate was: ‘May you be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan.’77 However, as we have seen, Cassius Dio is critical of the latter’s military exploits, which he believes were motivated by a personal greed for glory. The emperor’s great campaigns in the east against the Parthians ultimately failed, and his conquests, which had cost so much loss of life, could not be maintained.78 Hadrian by contrast was not so respected by the upper classes, and the opening of his reign was clouded by the execution of four senators of consular rank. But Dio praises his tough discipline and training of the army. Foreign peoples kept the peace because of their respect for him, and he provoked no wars.79Yet not everyone agreed. Cornelius Fronto said that Hadrian preferred to surrender rather than defend by force the provinces won by Trajan, and produced the outrageous falsehood that the emperor had abandoned the province of Dacia.80 These opinions perhaps indicate something of the debate that attended these events among eminent men in Rome. Were Trajan’s conquests justified and worthwhile? Did Hadrian’s policy sensibly consolidate and preserve the strength of the empire, or was it an excuse for indolence? We may have Hadrian’s defence of his actions in the clever epigram attributed to him:‘I have achieved more by peace than others by war.’81 In fact it seems that both Trajan and Hadrian needed to explain and justify their actions, and that warfare, conquest and the direction of campaigns remained serious and relevant topics of discussion. Even if this was at the simplistic level suggested by the comments in Tacitus and Dio outlined above, it helped to establish the context in which Roman emperors after Augustus set out to influence or interact with public opinion, and to create an image of an effective military leader. The means they used owed much to Augustus, and involved a series of integrated visual and verbal images that embraced buildings, monuments, coins, public displays and ceremonies, and the constant repetition of honorific names and titles. Publicity was therefore part of the environment of day-to-day life and commercial transactions. On the other hand, we must beware of thinking that the dissemination of publicity was top of the government agenda. There were many factors involved including the artistic freedom and input of the architects, artists and designers, and the amount of direct influence the emperor had remains obscure, though it is unlikely that significant initiatives were undertaken without his approval.
World History
