Pax Romana

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Provinces with sizeable garrisons were politically sensitive and closely watched. Over time, the frumentarii, soldiers responsible for collecting and supplying grain to the army, took on a wider intelligence role, and it was easier for emperors to keep an eye on what was happening in the major garrisons. Domitian recalled and executed a legate of Britain because the man had allowed a new pattern of spear to be named after him. This was seen as the cruelty of an overly suspicious and insecure princeps, much like Nero’s instructions for several successful commanders, including the famous Corbulo, to take their own lives. Augustus came to power through civil war, as did Vespasian and his short-lived predecessors, and later Septimius Severus. A mistaken report of the death of Marcus Aurelius prompted the Syrian legate Avidius Cassius to declare himself as princeps. When he learned the truth it was too late to step back, but he does not appear to have attempted to fight with any energy against the widely respected Marcus Aurelius. Even so the emperor went to the province to confirm the loyalty of the east. Although Cassius and his son died, there were no widespread executions following this ghastly mistake.28

  In AD 19 Tiberius’ adopted son Germanicus held a wide command of the eastern provinces and chose to dismiss the legate of Syria, Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso. When Germanicus died amid rumours of poisoning, Piso not only celebrated the news at a feast, but went back to Syria and tried to resume command of the province, rallying some of the garrison and fighting skirmishes with troops loyal to his successor. He was defeated and later put on trial at Rome. His accusers, who included Tiberius’ son Drusus, attacked him for his record as legate before he was replaced, as well as his later actions when he had started a brief civil war. Particular attention was paid to his attempts to win the loyalty of soldiers, by undermining discipline and pampering them. Commissions and promotions for centurions were bought or given to favourites, while experienced and strict officers were replaced. His wife Placina appeared at reviews, and was accused of ingratiating herself with the army. Her conduct may well have lain behind the attempt to ban governors’ wives from accompanying them to their provinces.

  Piso took his own life and was posthumously found guilty, and the Senate’s decree recording this verdict was copied and posted up around the empire, so that the text has been found on an inscription from Spain, largely confirming Tacitus’ account of the episode. The desire to publicise his misconduct was a reminder to all, and especially the army, of the loyalty they owed to the princeps and a clear message that any challenge to this would not go unpunished. It also demonstrated that even governors of provinces were bound by the laws and under the authority of the emperor. For all their pronouncements, there was far less certainty that emperors would act when the misconduct did not involve attempted subversion of the army or rebellion. Overall, governors of all kinds in the first and second centuries AD were probably better behaved than was typical under the Republic. Yet there were exceptions, occasionally of gross misconduct and more often of lesser peculation. As in all systems in any period of history, there are some individuals convinced that they can break the rules – and, even when regulation is tight, a minority who succeed and reinforce the confidence of the rest. Acceptance of gifts and the favouring of friends were common, no doubt justified on the ‘everyone does it’ basis common in many ages.29

  As under the Republic, prosecutions of former governors were prompted by formal complaints from the provincial communities, usually via an embassy. The passage of time combined with the more settled conditions of the Principate meant that provincials were more aware of how to operate within the system. Pliny had already represented the Baetici in another similar case so they came to him again. He noted that people who should be grateful would quickly forget their obligation if the new request was denied, and felt obliged to act for them again to confirm the connection. The prosecution of several proconsuls of Bithynia in the years before Pliny’s legateship suggests not only frequent misconduct by governors, but also a provincial population well aware of how to bring charges and get the cases brought to trial. If it is right to see minor giving and selling of favour as very common, then it is likely that most governors offered some fuel for charges, even if on the whole they had behaved well.30

  Another big difference from the Republic was the even greater number of Romans living or active in the provinces, which also meant that there were more people of note to testify against a governor charged with maladministration. The colonisation programme during the civil war era and afterwards placed hundreds of thousands of citizens and their families all around the empire. Their descendants – in the case of the higher-ranking officers, already men of some education and wealth – could become men of substance. At the same time grants of Roman citizenship to provincials became more and more common. At least from the time of Claudius, auxiliary soldiers who served their twenty-five years and were honourably discharged were granted the franchise – a right extended to one wife and their children. At times non-citizen recruits were taken for the legions, for instance from Galatia, and granted citizenship immediately. Army veterans were not necessarily especially wealthy – one study based on evidence from Egyptian villages found it hard to distinguish them from their civilian and non-citizen neighbours. Yet they were numerous, especially in the areas of heavy recruitment such as Spain, Thrace, the Rhineland and parts of Syria.31

  Less numerous, but individually and collectively more important, were the representatives of local elites who were granted citizenship on an individual basis – or in the case of magistrates in municipia, as a reward for public service. Such men were men of property and social standing in the first place, which was only increased by this additional honour. We should not underestimate their numbers. In the early first century AD Gades boasted no fewer than 500 residents who were not merely citizens, but equites. This status opened the prospect of a career in imperial service, usually beginning as commander of an auxiliary infantry cohort, then a spell as one of five equestrian tribunes in a legion, followed by command of an ala of auxiliary cavalry. Successful men went on to posts commanding the cohorts of the praetorian guard, the urban cohorts and vigiles in Rome. Some became procurators and the most successful governed equestrian provinces.32

  Julius Caesar introduced several aristocrats from Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul into the Senate, and this trend of promoting provincials continued under the Principate. Claudius made a long speech explaining his reasons for admitting men from the old ‘long-haired’ Gaul, but over time the presence of men born in the provinces ceased to require comment. Agricola was from Gaul – as perhaps was Tacitus. Arrian and Dio Cassius were both from Bithynia and Pontus. By the second century AD there were emperors like Trajan and Hadrian from Spain, and Septimius Severus from Africa. Hadrian was mocked for his ‘provincial’ Spanish accent, but no one questioned that he was truly Roman. Being born outside Italy did not necessarily make a man more sympathetic to the provincials. The proconsul of Baetica whose crimes were prosecuted by Pliny was from Africa. Ironically enough, simultaneously with his governorship in Spain, the African province was being plundered by a proconsul born in Baetica, who was subsequently tried and found guilty. According to Pliny the Baetici jokingly quoted an old motto – ‘I gave as bad as I received.’33

  Yet the presence of families who produced equestrian officers and senators did mean that there were more and more provincials capable of bringing charges of misconduct against governors. It also played a central role in making provincial populations accept Roman rule. No more recent empire has matched the Romans’ willingness and skill in absorbing others. Local elites were given the prospect of success, wealth and fame on a far grander scale as long as they integrated into the imperial system, with the most successful becoming senators, governors or even emperors. This required a willingness to learn Latin and to dress and act like a Roman – all the things Agricola encouraged the elite among the British tribes to do. Arminius, Florus, Sacrovir, Civilis and a few others followed this path only
to reject it, but the vast majority embraced these opportunities and then competed with each other to succeed. It took longer for large numbers of men from the Hellenic east to follow this career path, a reflection of their greater attachment to domestic politics and also a slower spread of citizenship, but the elites of that area soon caught up. Religious restrictions prevented Jewish aristocrats from imperial service unless, like the Alexandrian Tiberius Alexander, they ceased to follow their faith, and this clearly hindered the absorption of the elite in Judaea and contributed to the rebellion under Nero.

  Provincial elites benefited most from being part of the empire, and since they were the natural leaders of any revolt, this helped to keep control of the provinces. Men willing to serve in the army gained citizenship and so some status and protection under law. It is hard to know how easy it was for men of humbler birth to break into the ranks of the local aristocracies. Probably it was possible, if only for a handful. It looks as if many auxiliary centurions were local men, and not necessarily citizens during their service, but their pay was substantial and citizenship followed discharge if it was not gained during service. Over the generations a family might rise to equestrian rank and then even gain admission to the Senate. Paradoxically, a quicker route was open to slaves from all over the world. Wealthy freedmen were a topic for ridicule, but were often important figures in local communities, and their descendants faced no legal restrictions on their own careers. Pertinax was the son of a freedman, failed to get commissioned as a legionary centurion and became a schoolmaster instead, but later gained equestrian status, served in the equestrian commands, was admitted to the Senate for distinguished service, and went on to command legions, govern provinces, and in AD 193 become emperor – albeit being murdered after only three months.34

  Until Caracalla extended citizenship to virtually the entire free population of the empire in AD 212 – by which time the legal advantages of the status were already being eroded – most provincials did not possess it, and even fewer were able to follow a career in imperial service. The better off, whether an existing privileged aristocracy or newcomers who joined or usurped them under Roman rule, gained much more from the empire than the bulk of the population. This did not mean that they were cut off from the rest of provincial society, although it could mean spending much of their lives elsewhere. Senators were obliged to own lands in Italy even if more of their wealth was invested in the provinces. Old bonds of obligation and service may well have changed and can rarely be traced, but this was not necessarily to the disadvantage of the less well off. On balance there was probably more chance of poorer provincials finding an influential patron as more and more equestrians and senators came from the provinces. Some areas did far better in this respect than others, with prosperity a major factor, since both equestrian and senatorial status required a man to possess considerable wealth. As far as we can tell Britain never produced any senators. It is impossible to say why, or whether this meant that its population was treated differently.

  INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS

  Our evidence favours the well off over the poor, and urban over rural environments, even though the majority of people lived in the countryside and were in some way associated with working the land. Most distinctive styles of building and monuments occurred in cities, and by the later first and second centuries AD cities from all over the empire would look recognisably akin, very obviously part of the same broad culture. This imperial culture was neither purely Roman nor static, and grew under the influence of other ideas and societies. The strongest influence was Greek, but there were others and ‘Greek’ culture itself was a loose thing which changed as a result of coming under Roman rule. Fashions for clothes, food and drink, as well as a taste for bath houses, chariot-racing and gladiatorial games, spread throughout the empire, adding to rather than supplanting established institutions such as the gymnasium. Ideas travelled, so did literature and the arts, from formal portraiture to mosaics and wall paintings. Local variations in taste and material are small compared to the overwhelming similarities. The performing arts similarly spread, whether comedy or drama in Greek or Latin and, most common of all, mimes, mythological stories performed by dancers to musical and vocal accompaniment where the language and literacy did not matter so much. It is an intriguing thought that people living as far apart as the Tyne and the Euphrates may have watched the same stories and hummed the same tunes.

  In the countryside the pace of change was slower, although as we have seen it was still considerable. The division between town and country can be artificial, for in some areas the two were closely connected and often physically close together, whereas elsewhere towns and cities were wide apart. In areas like Gaul and Britain the aristocracies did not transfer all their attentions to the towns, and remained an important presence in the countryside. The modern convention is to use the name ‘villa’ far more specifically than the Romans, as the term for a substantial country residence at the centre of a large estate. Even then the variation in size, scale and luxury is considerable. Some were essentially country houses in the more modern sense, built for comfort and to display wealth. These might still serve a practical function, but others were purely designed as centres for agriculture or pastoral activity, and some of them were not at all big. Rarely do we know who the owners were, and whether they were local or outsiders who had acquired the land.35

  It took longer for new techniques of construction, new materials and styles of building to be adopted by the bulk of the rural population. This should not be exaggerated, as the use of timber and wattle and daub lasted for some time in many towns and cities, although traces of it do not always survive under later stone buildings. In Gaul it was several generations before tile roofs became common in villages and small farms. In Britain many people continued to build and live in roundhouses with thatched roofs just as their ancestors had done in the Iron Age and earlier. These were strong, often large and highly functional structures, and several joined together by a complex of walls serving as animal pens accommodated an extended family who farmed the land around them. The pattern was generally for numbers of them to be dotted short distances from each other rather than collected as a village, and unless excavated it is impossible to date such sites. Yet in spite of this continuity, finds show that the people living in roundhouses often had access to goods that were either very rare or unknown during the Iron Age. The occupants of these traditional houses may well have lived in equal or greater comfort than the inhabitants of the slum tenement blocks in the cities, albeit with less access to the amenities of urban life.36

  Life in the ancient world could be a grim business. A bad harvest – or worse still, a succession of bad harvests – caused shortages which rapidly inflated the cost of staple foods. The free poor were at most risk, forced to do without or to place themselves in debt to buy enough to survive. Slaves were property and had a value, so that their owners were more likely to protect their investment and provide them with food even when times were hard – that is, assuming the owners were not themselves poor and forced to sell these extra mouths. Famine appears as a real threat in many provinces for much of the time, and some scholars would see the danger as universal. In this respect the Roman era did not differ from those before or after, so the danger was not peculiar to the empire.37

  It took considerable effort and expenditure for the emperors to ensure that the population of Rome and the professional army did not go without, but other less significant groups were not so fortunate. Local magistrates and the wealthy – an overlapping group – did purchase stocks of food to be sold off cheaply or given to a city’s population, and might be attacked by crowds if they failed to deliver. Urban populations, who possessed greater opportunities to protest, did better in such situations than scattered rural settlements, although these at least had better opportunities to forage. Under Augustus, Herod the Great paid for grain from the province of Egypt to be shipped to his kingdom when there was a shortage of food. Such an arran
gement between an allied king and the equestrian governor of a province was surely not unprecedented, and it is likely that similar assistance came from one province to another. Yet transporting large quantities of grain was difficult, slow and expensive, even when some of the journey could be made by sea. The security created by the empire made such aid easier than in the past, and meant that most provinces were surrounded by other provinces or allied states. There were still severe limits to what could be achieved even when there was sufficient political will to deal with a problem, and the larger the scale of the famine or other natural disaster, then the greater the strain placed both on resources and good intentions.38

  Some of the population teetered on the brink of starvation, and some families – and inevitably, even more women left on their own – were desperate enough to expose children on rubbish or dung heaps, letting anyone take them, even if they raised them as slaves. In Egypt some were given the name Kopros or ‘dung’ and a few did well enough to earn their freedom and turn this into a proud family name. It is very hard to know how common this was, but it did happen and was certainly something everyone could imagine. As we have seen, Pliny issued a legal ruling dealing with adults who had been exposed in this way as infants. Some people lived in desperate poverty even when they were in paid employment. In the first century BC Varro claimed that women working on the land in Liguria would take a break to give birth, before returning to their work rather than losing their meagre pay. The Roman senator found this both strange and alien, and obviously felt that it was unusual and so worth repeating. So much of our evidence is anecdotal, which makes it hard to generalise, but such tales remind us that we should not impose modern Western standards on the Roman past. Grinding poverty existed in Italy and the provinces, as it had in most areas before the empire, and as it has in much of human history, including the present day. There is no evidence to suggest that Roman rule forced a higher proportion of the population than before into this condition.39