Pax Romana

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  The bureaucratic machine simply did not exist for a governor to settle down in one place for a year or more and direct the province from there, and so all governors toured the area under their control. Provinces were divided into a number of assizes (conventus) where he would stop, hold court and be open to appeals. This meant that a governor spent much of his time on the move, even when he was not engaged in military operations. Since the praetorship could not be held until the age of thirty-nine, even the most junior governor was at least forty, and many were older. Levels of health and fitness inevitably varied. Men like Pompey and Caesar kept themselves in training, but others are unlikely to have been so disciplined. We hear of one praetorian governor in Spain who was captured by the enemy and killed because the tribesmen holding him could not believe that someone so old and fat held any importance as a prisoner.13

  When he was with the army a governor rode on horseback or sometimes even marched alongside the column. Travelling with just his staff, he was unlikely to do this except over short distances. A chariot offered an alternative, but that meant standing up, and so again was unsuitable for long journeys and, if used at all, chariots were probably kept for entering a city in some style. Most of the time a governor travelled in a four-wheeled enclosed carriage (raeda) drawn by mules or the local equivalent. This permitted a degree of comfort, shelter from the elements, and the chance to rest or work. Caesar was renowned for dictating to a secretary on journeys, composing letters and literary works alike. Even so in bad weather, and wherever the roads were in a poor state, long days spent in such a vehicle no doubt reinforced the appeals of life back in Rome for a man like Cicero. At night a governor and his staff might pitch camp – Caesar’s law granted them an allowance for tents – or if they had reached a town or city, accept the hospitality of an important local man.14

  Cicero arrived in Cilicia with the summer’s campaigning season already well under way, but only then began to receive up-to-date news about the military situation and the threat posed by the Parthians. Even this was incomplete. He had arranged to meet his predecessor, the outgoing proconsul Appius Claudius Pulcher, changing his own route to make this possible. This was a courtesy rather than a requirement, and would have had the advantage of giving him up-to-date information. In the event Appius did not show up, having changed his mind without bothering to inform his successor. At first Cicero had trouble finding out where the garrison of the province was. Before he arrived he had heard of discontent among the soldiers, for their pay was heavily in arrears and there may also have been other problems. On arrival he discovered that five cohorts, half of one of the legions, had marched off and were camped on their own, without any officers. It seemed that Appius still had another three cohorts – and the ones closest to their proper strength – as an escort, leaving not much more than half of the army in the main camp.15

  Although he held some brief assizes on his way to the army, Cicero had clearly set the rest of the summer aside for military operations. The errant units were gathered up, and the ease with which the five mutinous cohorts returned to the fold suggests that part of their grudge was with Appius or one of his senior subordinates rather than anything deeper. Cicero advanced with his reunited army to the borders with Syria, ready to support Bibulus in the event of a Parthian invasion. He also felt that it was good to stiffen the resolve of the allied kings of Cappadocia and Galatia – and indeed to send a message of Roman confidence and strength to the monarch of Armenia, whose realm lay beyond them.16

  In September a few raids by the Parthians were repulsed, and reports made clear that there was no likelihood of a major invasion in the immediate future. Cicero decided to lead a punitive expedition against the peoples who lived in the rugged hill country around Mount Amanus, which lay along the border between Cilicia and Syria. Having pretended to move away, the Romans force-marched back and attacked, surprising the locals and burning several of their settlements. Cicero then besieged the walled hilltop village of Pindenissum, which surrendered after fifty-seven days. This yielded plunder that he gave to the troops, and captives to be sold as slaves. Better yet, this display of Roman force, and the Romans’ willingness to attack even such a minor mountain stronghold, convinced a neighbouring community to send envoys to him seeking peace with Rome.

  Cicero had no illusions about the obscurity of his enemy – ‘“Who on earth are these Pindenissitae of yours?”’ he wrote, imagining his friend’s question. ‘“I never heard the name.” That’s not my fault. I cannot turn Cilicia into Aetolia or Macedonia.’ For all his joking, his soldiers had hailed him as imperator, and this was the first step in winning a triumph, something which he came to crave. Soon letters would go to influential senators urging them to support the vote to grant him a public thanksgiving, which was the next stage in the process. It seems unlikely that he had inflicted 5,000 casualties on the enemy, even if prisoners are included, which is a reminder that we should not assume every Roman victory really involved bloodshed on this scale.17

  The peoples of the Amanus mountains were ‘perpetual’ enemies and given to raiding and robbery. Earlier on, Cicero had explained that communications were often poor in Cilicia because of the activities of bandits. Bibulus soon followed his example and launched his own expedition against that of Mount Amanus, which lay within his province of Syria. If the Parthians had appeared in greater force, then no doubt neither proconsul would have turned his attentions to the villages in this area. That does not mean that the hostility of the Pindenissitae and their neighbours was imaginary. Banditry was, and would continue to be, a real problem in this area, not helped because it lay between the two Roman provinces. The tribes in the Alps were also well known to extort money from travellers and even Roman armies moving through the high passes, something that would not end until their suppression at the end of the century.18

  It is too simple to see Cicero as simply indulging in triumph-

  hunting – desperate though his desire to win the honour would prove. Once again we should remember that the chief victims of banditry were the more settled provincial communities. As yet no governor had dealt permanently with the problem, but that was a question of resources and competing priorities as much as lack of Roman interest in the matter. Cicero had demonstrated Roman power, showing that the Romans were willing to besiege and capture a mountaintop stronghold, even if this took them many weeks. It showed the inhabitants of the area that they were vulnerable to retribution, and so made them more likely to submit to Roman demands in future. Unfortunately, Bibulus’ expedition ended in a minor disaster, with an entire cohort of legionaries wiped out by the locals, so that the façade of Rome’s strength was swiftly cracked. Afterwards one of his legates won a minor victory, but the region was far from permanently under Rome’s control.19

  It was now winter, which meant that there was no real prospect of a Parthian invasion before the late spring or early summer, when there would be sufficient grass for grazing. Quintus took the legions into winter camp, and on 5 January 50 BC Cicero set out to travel back westwards along the main road. He stopped at some of the cities along the way, and dealt with some business, but by 11 February he was at Laodicea. Here he held grand assizes, setting aside two weeks for the business of each of the six assize regions. The proconsul did not go to Cyprus and, since the laws of that island forbade cases being heard anywhere else, he sent a representative to hold an assize there in his place.20

  MAKING MONEY

  As governor Cicero’s authority was supreme, and many decisions were entirely up to him. Inevitably this meant that there were plenty of individuals and communities wishing to gain his favour and secure a particular outcome. Most governors and their staffs expected to be entertained lavishly whenever they stopped in a community. This was considered no more than the appropriate honours due to officials of Rome, but it was also an opportunity for the hosts to make a connection with the governor and those close to him. Thus it could work to their advantage, even if provincials had
no choice about offering this hospitality and could be compelled if reluctant. In spite of the regulations of the Julian Law, there was little they could do to resist demands imposed on them, or at least on their pockets. As we have seen, in 79 BC a householder and his neighbours resisted by force the attempted rape of his daughter by the legate Verres, although in the long run the man and his son were condemned and executed on trumped-up charges. Later, as governor of Sicily from 73–71 BC, Verres was accused of multiple thefts of artworks – or their forced sale at absurdly low prices – from the houses of his hosts. The power of a governor meant that it was unwise to refuse him anything. Individuals were unlikely to take the risk, and even communities had little chance of success.21

  If there was a Roman garrison in the province, then the governor was also fully entitled to demand that these be billeted on the provincials. Such guests were less distinguished, less influential and usually even less welcome, not least because the costs of feeding and accommodating them were considerable. A visit for months on end by thousands of legionaries in a city, bored, all too often unpaid and not always well led or disciplined – and yet still Romans very conscious of belonging to the City that ruled the world – did little for the peace and calm of a community. Yet there were usually ways of avoiding this disruptive burden. Cicero claims that every city was surprised when he did not ask them for money to be excused from this:

  Before my time, this time of year was devoted to profit. The wealthier cities used to pay a lot of money to avoid having soldiers quartered on them for the winter – Cyprus used to pay nearly 200 Attic talents; an island that under my administration I can say speaking only the truth, has not been asked for anything. They are all stunned, because I will accept no honours save for verbal ones. I will not accept statues, nor shrines, nor statues of me in a four-horsed chariot.22

  Cicero was unusually scrupulous, and tried to restrict his staff to taking no more than the law allowed them when they travelled as his representatives. He was not wholly successful in this, but it is fair to say that by and large he and his cohort behaved about as well as could be expected – a burden to the provincials, but a much lesser one than most governors. Privately, Cicero felt that his predecessor Appius Claudius Pulcher had behaved like a ‘wild beast’, and so he ‘tried not to re-open the wounds inflicted [on the province], but they are obvious and cannot be hidden’. The payment to avoid having troops quartered on them – and it is worth noting that there was no good military or logistical reason to send them to Cyprus in particular – was just one of Appius’ demands. Like many Roman governors, he seems to have taken payments to ensure favourable judgements. Trials were especially susceptible to this, not simply with the verdict, but decisions over where they would take place, the appointment of judges and advice to them. The victors in such cases were likely to have to pay for their success, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the case.23

  A governor was concerned with disputes between communities, and might be encouraged to take an interest in internal matters, but his prime focus was with cases involving Roman citizens. As we have seen, the large numbers of traders and businessmen already active in a region rapidly grew once it became a province. Some were men of wealth, at times ostentatious and even vulgar in its display. Cicero was more amused than impressed when he encountered Publius Vedius, ‘a dubious character, but with ties to Pompey’. The proconsul met him on the road, with a large entourage and two chariots, one with a baboon as passenger, as well as a horse-drawn raeda carriage and a litter. Litters carried by slaves were popular and had a particular association in the Roman mind with the wealth of the east, but were not considered quite proper. Vedius was probably an equestrian, but even more important than this was his connection with Pompey the Great, not only Rome’s most famous general and perhaps the wealthiest man in the Senate, but also thought likely to come to the east soon to wage war on the Parthians. Thus for all his view of the man, the proconsul treated him with respect and passed the time of day. Vedius was also important enough to be fit material for gossip, and Cicero gleefully passed on a story he heard sometime later. When some of the man’s baggage was mistakenly opened, it was discovered to contain little portrait busts of five married aristocratic ladies.24

  Many Romans lacked Vedius’ connections, but as a group the publicani were numerous and dangerous to ignore. The Roman Republic lacked the resources to carry out many tasks and from its earliest days had looked to private citizens to undertake them, whether in small matters such as providing sacrificial animals for the state cults, or far larger things such as building work, and supplying the armies. Normally several individuals would take on these public contracts, and although the Romans never developed anything equivalent to modern corporate law, the associations did develop a group identity and owned property. Reliance on private suppliers of services was common in the Greek world but, as Roman power grew, the sheer number and scale of contracts dwarfed earlier practices. Polybius claimed that ‘almost everybody’ at Rome was involved in some shape or form in this. Senators were excluded from public contracts, and he was clearly talking in the main about wealthier citizens, and most of all equestrians.25

  On the whole the system functioned with reasonable efficiency. There was a case during the Second Punic War when two out of nineteen publicani contracted to supply the legions fighting in Spain were caught out in a major fraud, claiming compensation for nonexistent cargoes when their decrepit ships were lost at sea. Few nations have been entirely free of profiteers in time of war, and it is notable that the other seventeen did a good job. After the defeat of the Carthaginians, Spain opened up new opportunities for the publicani, such as the extensive silver mines near New Carthage. The state did not have the machinery to exploit these, and so let contracts for working them. Publicani bid at Rome for the rights to mine, buying them for a set sum which permitted the state to know what its revenue would be. Polybius, who had visited the area, claimed that the treasury received 25,000 denarii a day from this source. Clearly the contractors needed to produce more than this to make a profit, and seem to have done so on a considerable scale. Yet the Republic was not always willing to open such opportunities to them. When Macedonia became a province, the royal mines were closed because the Senate did not want to open them to the publicani.26

  It was as tax collectors that the publicani became infamous and widely loathed – hence the despised publicans of the King James Bible, even though these were local agents of the companies rather than publicani in the strict sense of the word. In Asia and the other eastern provinces, contracts to collect the main taxes were farmed out to them, as indeed were many other levies and duties there and in the rest of the empire. Rights to collect them were auctioned off in Rome by the censors, usually going to the highest bidders, just as contracts for services went to the lowest. A decade before Cicero went to Cilicia the publicani who had bought the rights to collect taxes in Asia asked for a rebate, for the province was not in a good enough condition to allow them to turn a profit, and there was a danger that they would make a loss. He and many others thought the demand was scandalous, but were unwilling to oppose it openly. Others did so, and it took several years before the companies got their way.27

  The sums involved in the major public contracts were massive – many times the one million sesterces which by the end of the first century BC became the minimum property qualification for membership of the Senate – and their wealth gave the publicani considerable influence. In most cases the Republic had no real alternative other than to employ them if it was to receive revenue from the provinces. Success in politics required a man to spend lavishly, but much of a senator’s wealth was tied up in the rural estates that were the proper source of income for an aristocrat. Many borrowed to fund their careers, often enough from men who had interests in the companies of publicani, so that when they arrived as governors in a province they had to be careful in their relationship with them. As Cicero wrote to Quintus when his brother governe
d Asia:

  And yet to all your good intentions and diligence there is the serious problem of the publicani; if we oppose them, we will alienate from ourselves and the Republic an order that has deserved well of us and the state . . . and if we give in to them in everything, we shall allow the ruin of those whose safety and indeed interests we ought to protect.

  Balancing the needs of the influential publicani and saving the provincials from penury demanded a ‘divine’ virtue – something his older brother claimed Quintus possessed. In Cilicia Cicero tried to do the same thing, only permitting the companies to take what they were due, but at the same time insisting that the provincials paid promptly. He claims that this satisfied both sides, which was surely true.28

  A weak governor let the publicani squeeze the provincials too tightly, raising more than was the legal due, perhaps forcing communities to borrow at extortionate rates to have the ready cash to pay them. An unscrupulous governor could do even worse, combining with the tax collectors and using his authority and the force at his command for their mutual profit. Verres collaborated with the publicani collecting the tithe on the grain harvest in much of Sicily, and had the latter destroy many of their records for what they were doing. A few governors resisted the companies, but when Scaevola and his legate Rutilius Rufus did so in Asia, it provoked the latter’s prosecution and exile. For all that he surely did not deserve this fate, it is perfectly possible that Rufus had taken gifts from grateful cities and so was technically guilty, even if the majority of other provincial governors took as much or more and were never condemned. According to Livy, as early as the second century BC the opinion was voiced in the Senate that ‘wherever there was a publicanus, there is either no effective law or no freedom for the provincials’.29