Pax Romana

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Scythopolis: The city of Scythopolis was the only one of the Decapolis or ‘Ten Towns’ situated west of the River Jordan. Although overtly Greek, it had a substantial Jewish minority. In AD 66 these fought alongside other townsfolk to repel an attack by Jewish rebels. However, soon afterwards they were massacred by some of their Gentile neighbours.

  Cologne tombstone of Athenian flute-player: Under Roman rule goods and also people moved further and more freely than ever before. This memorial stone from Cologne in Lower Germany was set up in honour of the sixteen-year-old flute-player Ruphus by his father, a native of Alexandria and a citizen of Athens.

  Iron Age round house: Round houses were characteristically British and had a long history before the Romans arrived. Throughout the Roman occupation, many people continued to live in farming communities based around several of these houses as well as animal pens. Even so, such sites show that goods from the empire were far more readily available than in the past, and it is hard to portray such settlements as a sign of people rejecting the Roman world. (© DJC/Alamy Stock Photo)

  British victory: Commodus was the son of the much-admired Marcus Aurelius, but unlike his father he spent little time on the frontiers with the army, preferring life in Rome and displaying his prowess in the Colosseum. This coin celebrates a victory won in Britain by the provincial legate. Victories won by the provincial armies were attributed to the emperor, but so were defeats. (Guy de la Bédoyère)

  Augustus: Augustus was the first emperor, or princeps, and the last and greatest conqueror in Rome’s history. Apart from a few later additions, such as Britain and Dacia, the basic shape of the empire formed under his rule. Much of his reign was spent touring the provinces.

  Trajan: Trajan came to power with modest military experience, and this may well have encouraged him to expand the empire. In two wars, he conquered Dacia and turned it into a province. Later, he embarked on a major campaign against the Parthians, but most of the gains were lost in a spate of rebellions or abandoned by his successor, Hadrian.

  Septimius Severus: Septimius Severus fought his way to the throne in a civil war with rival provincial governors from Britain and Syria. It was no coincidence that he subsequently launched attacks on Parthia and the Caledonian tribes of Northern Britain. While these may have been necessary to reassert Roman dominance on the frontiers, they were also a means of confirming the loyalty of the legions in each region.

  South Shields reconstructed fort gateway: This reconstructed gateway at the Roman fort of South Shields near the mouth of the River Tyne was built in the late twentieth century. It is probable that it should be a storey higher. Roman gateways were intended to look impressive, but once again the towers barely project in front of the curtain wall.

  Saalburg reconstructed fort: In the nineteenth century, the German Kaiser encouraged the grand reconstruction of much of a Roman auxiliary fort at the Saalburg. While archaeologists today would change some aspects of this, it gives a good impression of the sheer scale and grandeur of one of these army bases. Legionary fortresses were more than ten times bigger.

  Cologne cavalry tombstone: The tombstone of Titus Flavius Bassus from Cologne shows the auxiliary cavalryman trampling an unarmoured and semi-naked barbarian. At least half of the Roman army consisted of non-citizens or auxiliaries who received Roman citizenship at the end of their twenty-five years of service. Bassus died at the age of forty-six, soon after being granted this honour and probably before he was formally discharged from the army.

  Trajan’s Column, rampart and severed heads: This scene from Trajan’s Column shows a row of severed heads – some already decomposed – mounted on spears along the rampart of a Dacian fortress. Archaeology has shown that similar trophies were sometimes raised on the walls of Roman auxiliary forts. The security of frontiers relied on shows of force intended to intimidate potential enemies.

  Hadrian’s Wall milecastle: Hadrian’s Wall is the largest monument left by the Roman army. Eighty Roman miles long, stretching from the Tyne to the Solway, there was a small outpost or milecastle like this one at intervals of close to a mile. This is milecastle 39, with the lake of Crag Lough in the background.

  Hadrian’s Wall milecastle gateway: Hadrian’s Wall was subject to numerous changes of design. Here at milecastle 37, the gateway opened out on to a cliff. Although at first given proper gates in this arch, this was later sealed up, apart from a narrow door allowing access to the outside, probably to permit maintenance of the wall.

  Trajan’s Column, watchtowers: Most Roman frontiers did not have a continuous wall or rampart like Hadrian’s Wall. Wherever possible frontier lines were placed on a major river, the bank lined with forts and smaller watchtowers and outposts in between. This scene from Trajan’s Column shows a watchtower on the Danube. Beside it are what looks like piled hay or timber, probably a warning beacon.

  Adamklissi metope of family in cart: At times large groups of people journeyed looking for new land, while seasonal movement of pastoralists and nomads occurred in other areas. Roman frontiers and tower systems helped to ensure that such movement was controlled and regulated by the empire. This metope from the Roman monument at Adamklissi in Romania shows a barbarian family travelling in a wagon.

  Adamklissi metope of battle around cart: Successful raiders acquired plunder and needed to transport this home. Inevitably this slowed them down. Time and again, the Romans only intercepted raiding bands while they were plundering or as they withdrew, burdened with loot and captives. This metope from Adamklissi shows a Roman legionary fighting a warrior beside a cart carrying a woman and child.

  Adamklissi metope of woman and child as captives: Several sculptures from Adamklissi show captives taken by the Romans, in this case including a woman holding a baby. Captives had considerable value as slaves, and some raiding outside and across the frontiers was fuelled by the profits from selling prisoners.

  Caerwent third-century walls: In the third century AD, the Pax Romana was undermined by frequent civil wars and problems on the frontiers as garrisons were stripped of men to go off and fight in the power struggles within the empire. Many cities acquired walls for the first time or strengthened existing defences. The third-century walls at Caerwent have projecting towers, allowing men in them to shoot missiles into the flank of anyone attacking the curtain walls.

  PART TWO

  PRINCIPATE

  VII

  EMPERORS

  ‘You, Roman, be sure to rule the world (these be your arts), to crown peace with justice, to spare the conquered and overcome the proud in war.’ – Virgil, c.20 BC.1

  POWER WITHOUT LIMIT

  The men who murdered Julius Caesar called themselves ‘the Liberators’, and claimed to have restored the freedom lost when the Republic was ruled by a dictator. Soon Cassius was minting coins featuring the goddess Libertas, while Brutus produced a series depicting a freedman’s cap on the reverse – the same symbol once used by Prusias II of Bithynia to show his subservience to Rome. This freedom was not for provincials, but for Romans, and in truth just for the aristocracy who ought to share high office and decision-making rather than see this monopolised by one man, whatever his personal merits. This was the only occasion in the long cycle of Roman civil wars when one side claimed to be acting on principle, and not simply battling with rivals for power. It was a cause with no relevance to the lives of provincials, and yet as loyal allies they were expected to play their part in the war that followed. As they raised armies in the eastern Mediterranean, Brutus and Cassius treated communities who failed to meet their demands for resources and money as rebels. Rhodes was attacked and forced to submit, several communities in Judaea sold into slavery, and the city of Xanthus in Lycia stormed and sacked, prompting the mass suicide of many inhabitants.2

  Cassius and Brutus were defeated and took their own lives in the autumn of 42 BC. Communities who had resisted them were praised by the victors and received some reparations. Mark Antony ordered those sold into slavery in Judaea
to be freed, gave new territory to Rhodes, and this island and all of Lycia were granted exemption from paying tax to Rome. In a letter to Hyrcanus, the allied ruler of Judaea, he spoke of Brutus and Cassius as ‘enemies of the Roman people’, and ‘oath-breakers’ (for they like all senators had sworn to protect Julius Caesar) who had committed crimes against men and gods:

  Now that these men have been punished, we hope henceforth we shall enjoy peace and give Asia respite from war. We are therefore ready to let our allies also participate in the peace given to us by God; and so, owing to our victory, the body of Asia is now recovering, as it were, from a serious illness. Having, therefore, in mind to promote the welfare both of you and your nation, I shall take care of your interests.

  Not all communities did so well, and the ones who more readily had met Brutus’ and Cassius’ demands for money and other resources were now obliged to give even more to the victors.3

  The ‘respite from war’ was short-lived. In the winter of 41–40 BC the Parthian invasion feared by Cicero at long last happened. Asia was raided, Syria and Judaea overrun. Many individual leaders and communities resisted as far as they could, while others welcomed the invader. Hyrcanus was deposed by a rival backed by Parthian cavalry, who was in turn defeated with the aid of the legions as the Romans recovered and drove the invaders out. As ever, local ambitions did more than anything else to determine actions. For Judaea this was one further episode in a long-running civil war mainly fought by rival claimants from the Hasmonean royal family, with Roman – and in this case Parthian – aid being sought out in an effort to gain a decisive advantage. Yet for all the power struggles within allied kingdoms, it was the Roman civil wars that dominated these years. One by one the rival warlords were eliminated, until finally Antony fought Julius Caesar’s heir and namesake and was beaten, taking his own life in August 30 BC.4 The victor was not quite thirty-three years old, but would never again face a serious challenge and remained in control of the Roman world until his death in AD 14. As Imperator Caesar Augustus – he was granted the semi-religious name by the Senate in 27 BC – his power rested ultimately on his control of an army which had grown to more than sixty legions by the time that he defeated Antony. Many soldiers were due for discharge, and it was Augustus who set them up in colonies and gave them land to farm. The rest were formed into about twenty-eight permanent legions, supported by non-citizen auxiliaries and naval units. All were now long-service professionals – by the end of his reign legionaries served for twenty-five years – and all were paid by him, rewarded and promoted by him, and swore a solemn oath to be loyal to him. Discipline was strict, and the troops were less pampered than during the civil war years. It was his army, and he and his successors took great care to preserve this monopoly of military force. In the second century AD, a senator renowned for his oratory was asked why he let the Emperor Hadrian publicly correct his use of a particular word. The man joked with his friends that surely everyone must ‘acknowledge that the man who controls thirty legions is the most learned of all’.5

  Imperator Caesar Augustus, the son of the divine Julius, did not call himself king or dictator. Instead he was princeps – the first senator, the first citizen and the foremost servant of the state. His constitutional position developed over time, through trial and error rather than any long-term design, as offices, honours and privileges were awarded to him. The trend was for more and more of his powers to be personal, granted directly to him and not tied to a particular magistracy and so lapsing when the term of office expired. Each was awarded through due legal process, but there was no means of taking them back, and only Augustus himself could choose to give them up. From the beginning the Greeks called him Autokrator or autocrat, and there was no real question that he was anything other than a monarch, regardless of the title he used. Scholars refer to the system he created as the Principate, and describe it as a veiled monarchy.6

  It was a thin veil, and it is unlikely that anyone was really deceived. Under Augustus the Popular Assemblies still convened to elect magistrates, and there was often genuine competition, frequent bribery and occasional intimidation in the worst traditions of the last decades of the Republic. Yet Augustus recommended a significant number of candidates and these invariably won, and his successors transferred elections from the assemblies to the Senate. This was one of several additional powers gained by the Senate, which continued to meet and was treated with great respect and dignity, while losing all independence. By 30 BC its numbers had swollen to almost 1,000 members, and Augustus pruned them of the most unsuitable men who had been enrolled during the civil wars until it returned to around 600. The old aristocratic families were well represented, at least once a new generation grew up to replace the losses from the decades of violence. Senators provided the vast majority of provincial governors, including those for all the major provinces with the exception of Egypt, but when they commanded an army it was as a legate of the emperor, a legatus Augusti – representative and subordinate of Augustus with imperium delegated from him. (Africa was an exception, and the proconsul there had charge of a single legion, but even this was changed under Augustus’ successors.)

  A man could still win office and honours, but a successful career required the approval of the princeps. New men reached the consul-ship and ennobled their families, while the scions of the old houses were able to add to the record of their lines. None were permitted to compete with Augustus or his successors, and there were limits to what was possible. The last triumph by a man unrelated to the imperial family was celebrated in 19 BC, and after that even the most successful had to satisfy themselves with the insignia of triumph – the ornamenta triumphalia – and were not allowed to parade through the City. Augustus held three triumphs and two ovations (a lesser form of the honour, when the general rode on horseback rather than in a chariot), and refused a succession of other offers of triumphs awarded to him when a war was won by one of his legates. He was also consul thirteen times, the son of a god, the father of his country, and held a long string of other honours. The City of Rome was remodelled on a far grander scale to celebrate Augustus’ glory as leader of the Roman people. As the years passed, communities in Italy and the provinces set up more and more monuments to him and his close family. Some were given as benefactions to them, but many more were local initiatives. Augustus’ image and name were on every gold and silver coin throughout the empire – and on many of the bronze issues as well. Traditionally, Roman coins bore the heads of gods and goddesses, or distinguished but dead men from earlier generations. Julius Caesar was the first living Roman to be depicted on many, though not all, coins during his dictatorship. After his death other leaders did the same thing, including Brutus, but none could match the sheer quantity of coin series issued by Augustus. Whether on coin or as a bust, statue, sculpted relief or painting, the image of the princeps was everywhere. It was idealised and carefully controlled, the face that of a serenely handsome young man, and it never aged, in stark contrast to the Roman tradition of realistic, often grim-faced portraiture. More images of Augustus survive from the ancient world than of any other Roman emperor, or indeed any other human.7

  In 27 BC the princeps accepted an immense provincial command. He pretended reluctance for such a burdensome responsibility, but it is clear that the charade played out in the Senate was carefully orchestrated, as they begged the foremost servant of the state to take on the most important tasks for the wider good. At first Augustus controlled all of Spain, Gaul, Syria and Egypt, the first three ostensibly because they were regions where Roman control was least secure, either because they were not fully ‘pacified’ or because there was a threat from outside. North-western Spain was not yet conquered, Gaul was subject to raids from German tribes beyond the Rhine, and Syria had been badly disrupted during the civil wars and bordered on Parthia. The command was voted for ten years, but then extended by periods of five or ten years throughout his life. The remaining provinces were controlled by the Senate, with proconsuls s
elected by lot from former magistrates in the traditional way.8

  Within a decade, Transalpine Gaul and the new province of Baetica in southern Spain were transferred to senatorial control. Both were settled and peaceful, and this helped to confirm Augustus’ claim that he only took the dangerous provinces out of a sense of duty to Rome and would not cling on to them once they were secure. Instead he took responsibility for newly acquired provinces, notably in the Balkans and in Germany. Virtually all the army was stationed within his provinces, and so under his direct control or commanded by his legates. From 54 BC onwards, Pompey the Great had controlled the Spanish provinces in this same distant manner, remaining near Rome and never visiting his command, but employing legates to govern and lead the legions. During the years of their alliance Antony, Lepidus and the young Augustus had divided up the empire between them in a similar way, letting representatives act on their behalf in the provinces allocated to them. The Augustan system developed from this, but was on a far larger scale.9

  PEACE AND WAR

  The art and literature of the Augustan age – much of it encouraged and sponsored by the princeps and his associates – celebrated the return of peace. Augustus boasted that he ‘had extinguished the flames of civil war’. Among the many images of him, relatively few, especially of the statues, busts and reliefs, depict him as a general. The ara pacis augusti – the altar of the Augustan peace – decreed by the Senate in 13 BC and dedicated in 9 BC, is one of the most striking monuments celebrating his achievements, and depicts the princeps and his family walking in procession along with leading members of the Senate. The men are in togas, the women in formal dresses, all quintessentially Roman, but also as Roman civilians honouring the gods in time of peace. There are no soldiers on the monument, the only direct hint of military life being the cloak worn by Augustus’ stepson Drusus.10