After a long reign, from 138 to 161, longer than any emperor since the first two, Augustus and Tiberius, Antoninus Pius died. He was seventy, and the succession followed on untroubled. Marcus Aurelius had been nominated by Hadrian and in the last years of Antoninus he was closely involved in government. In turn, his reign was to bring to an end what the great historian of Rome, Edward Gibbon, called a Golden Age:
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
It is doubtful if the kings of the Brigantes would have seen their world in quite the same roseate glow. Gibbon’s estimate of the reign of Antoninus is in the same vein:
His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Despite this sense of Britannia dozing contentedly in the high summer of imperial Rome, the south was threatened again in 161, and another good soldier, Calpurnius Agricola, was despatched to deal with it. His governorship is well recorded in a series of inscriptions set up on Hadrian’s Wall as it was being recommissioned, and also elsewhere in the north. Newstead continued to be held, well forward of the Wall, and other outpost forts were maintained in the meantime.
In the Senate, Marcus Aurelius had insisted that Lucius Verus, long seen as the spare rather than the heir, be confirmed as co-emperor, the first time this had happened. It appeared that Marcus was the senior partner and Verus was given rein to campaign abroad in the eastern provinces. After an expedition to Parthia, in the Middle East, the Historia Augusta was not impressed:
He had brought with him [on his return] both minstrels and pipers, actors, pantomime jesters and jugglers, and all kinds of slaves in which Syria and Alexandria take pleasure, to such an extent that he seemed to have finished not a Parthian war but an actors’ war.
Verus died of apoplexy in 168, probably a suffering a stroke (he lived on speechless for three days) before expiring and Marcus was left to govern unhindered. Hadrian was enormously fond of him, and his judgement of Marcus Aurelius’ abilities seems to have been sound. While forced to campaign almost ceaselessly on Rome’s frontiers, especially the Danube, and endure the same sort of rigours Hadrian relished, he showed himself a true philosopher-king. What impressed Gibbon (and indeed anyone who reads them) was a series of writings, To Myself, which survived as Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. They are the deposit of a tremendous intelligence:
What peculiar distinction remains for a wise and good man, but to be easy and contented under every event of human life . . . ? Not to offend the divine Principle that resides in his soul, nor to disturb the tranquility of his mind by a variety of fantastical pursuits . . . To observe a strict regard to truth in his words and justice in his actions; and though all mankind should conspire to question his integrity and modesty . . . he is not offended at their incredulity, nor yet deviates from the path which leads him to the true end of life, at which everyone should endeavour to arrive with a clear conscience, undaunted and prepared for his dissolution, resigned to his fate without murmuring or reluctance.
Marcus’ equanimity was tested in 168 when German barbarians burst through the Danube frontier and reached northern Italy before being caught and defeated. This scare must have had a profound impact in Rome. The Emperor was on the Danube in the late 170s, fighting, amongst others, the Sarmatians and their heavy cavalry. At the same time, Avidius Cassius rose in rebellion in the east, claiming the imperial throne. To buy a hasty peace, Marcus accepted 8,000 Sarmatian cavalry into the Roman army and, in AD 175, 5,500 of them arrived in Britannia. The culture shock on both sides must have been considerable. Marcus’ rationale was probably very simple: a continental European posting for these horse-riding soldiers might see them slip away and ride home to the Danube shore, but escape from the island of Britannia might prove a little more tricky. Some time later, Sarmatian veterans settled at Ribchester in Lancashire, and there are traces of them at Chesters Fort on Hadrian’s Wall. It may be that they were used in the war in the Pennines against the Brigantes.
Gibbon’s Golden Age ended abruptly in 180 when Commodus Antoninus succeeded his father. Assassination attempts were made almost immediately, and it must be a testament to his ingenuity, strength of will and good fortune that he survived for twelve years. He was probably the most dissolute and chaotic emperor since Nero.
During the 180s war erupted again in Britain, and this time it threatened the whole province. Dio Cassius reported that native armies crossed the Wall that separated them from the Roman garrison, had killed a general (probably the Governor) and massacred his army. Evidence of destruction has been found along the eastern section, at the neighbouring forts of Halton Chesters, Rudchester and Corbridge. This suggests an invasion route down the Northumberland Plain and through the lower Tweed, sidestepping the garrisons at Newstead and the outpost forts on Dere Street.
A DRAGON ON A STICK
The Sarmatian heavy cavalry drafted into the Roman army by Marcus Aurelius wore armour and protection for their horses, but they held another innovation in their hands. They used a long cavalry lance, called a contus in Latin, perhaps 6 feet long and a deadly weapon with the momentum of a charging pony and rider behind it. The Romans adopted the contus quickly. Up to and including the Light and Heavy Brigades of Crimean fame, cavalry squadrons began their charge with the lance held upright and only levelled it at an enemy at the last moment. The Sarmatians attached flags and often a mythical beast to the end of them. The draco was a hollow, open-mouthed dragon’s head with a long tube of red or white material flowing behind so that, when the horseman kicked his pony into a gallop, it would fill with air like a windsock. For extra effect, reeds were inserted into the dragon’s mouth so that when air passed through, it seemed to scream. How this struck those hoping to repel a Sarmatian charge can only be imagined. Perhaps the dragons first hissed along Hadrian’s Wall. By the fourth century many Roman cavalry regiments had adopted the draco. Britain’s oldest national emblem, the red dragon of Wales, may well have come from the Sarmatians.
Ulpius Marcellus was sent to replace the Governor and it took at least three campaigning seasons to restore some sort of order. But it seems that the forts to the north of the Wall were abandoned once more, presumably because their garrisons were needed to strengthen the south, and because Scotland could no longer be held. Birrens and Newstead were never again reoccupied, and on Dere Street, over the Cheviot watershed and down into Northumberland, High Rochester and Risingham were also given up. In spite of a coin issue in 184 to celebrate a victory, and the adoption of the title of Britannicus by Commodus, it sounds more like a stand-off than any clear-cut result. Native kings had seen a Roman retreat in the late 150s, and when a weak Emperor succeeded in 180 they hit hard and cleared his army out of all the territory occupied in 139 to 142. In the circle of firelight their bards would have sung of victory.
The invasion had a very visible impact in the south. Walls began to rise around towns. Before 180 only a few had protected themselves in this way but the shock of events in the north, the massacre of the army and the killing of the Governor, persuaded local authorities to spend a good deal of cash and effort to make their communities safer. Imperial permission was required for the building of town walls and it was not easy to obtain. Always suspicious of allowing independent strength of any kind, emperors were traditionally reluctant – but it seems that there was a general recognition that Britannia was now vulnerable.
The central difficulty for Rome was that the province was not very Roman. In Spain and France a thoroughly Romanised society had been created. Large cities had grown up and Latin widely adopted. In Britain it was very different. Out of a population of 2 or 3 million, only 10 per cent lived in the hundred or so small towns, and perhaps 50,000 on vill
a estates in the countryside. When the army and its dependants, and the villagers in the vici, are added, the total of those who might reasonably be called Romano-British makes up a fifth, or at best a quarter, of the whole population. The Celtic speech community was overwhelmingly dominant, and Latin remained the langauge of authority, the towns and the army – the apparatus of colonisation. In Britain Rome simply did not catch on.
Against a background of that sort of cultural arithmetic, the continuing struggles of native kings appear in a different light. Ulpius Marcellus and the other governors who dealt with regular British rebellions may well have believed that a densely populated and largely Celtic countryside would rise to support insurgents if they looked like succeeding.
Meanwhile Commodus became crazier and crazier. In 182 he appointed the Praetorian Prefect, Perennis, as, in effect, his prime minister, handing over government almost entirely so that he could concentrate on ever more exotic and cruel forms of debauchery. In an ill-judged attempt to widen political power beyond the Senate, Perennis decreed that legionary commanders would now be drawn from the equestrian order, one rank below. At a stroke he removed a key senatorial prerogative – the command of the army. There was uproar, especially in Britain. Led by young aristocrats who saw their careers thwarted, the army mutinied. The British legions wanted to protest directly against the changes and they sent a deputation of no less than 1,500 soldiers to Rome to put their case directly to Commodus. Astonishingly, they proved persuasive and Perennis was removed from office.
To try to settle Britain down, Commodus sent Helvetius Pertinax, a seasoned soldier who knew the province well, having served two tours of duty there. After some initial success in defusing more mutiny and squashing a plot to promote himself as a rival to Commodus, Pertinax found that the situation began to deteriorate. A legion rebelled and attacked Pertinax and his amici, his bodyguard. Only the Governor survived, having been left for dead. His revenge was swift and severe but it only served to foment further disaffection, and Pertinax was forced to ask Rome to relieve him of his command. The discipline considered so important by Hadrian was breaking down.
Commodus’ behaviour did nothing to settle the gathering chaos. His madness, random cruelties and perversions were beginning to overwhelm the government of the Empire. Believing that he was the reincarnation of the god Hercules, he announced that he would appear publicly in the arena to demonstrate his divinity. As Consul and Hercules, at the same time, Commodus planned to fight as a gladiator and, of course, emerge entirely invincible. His assassination was arranged immediately.
Already Prefect of the City of Rome, Pertinax was proclaimed Emperor. But more chaos engulfed the Empire. When he attempted to bring the Praetorian Guard under closer and more direct control, Pertinax was murdered on the orders of the Prefect. The throne was then auctioned to the highest bidder and the Praetorians sold it to a fabulously wealthy and very foolish senator, Didius Julianus. No more durable than his predecessor, he was quickly removed as the frontier legions revolted, proclaiming no less than three candidates for the purple. Clodius Albinus, Governor of Britannia, claimed the throne at the same time as Septimius Severus in Pannonia (modern Hungary) and Niger Pescennius in Syria. A deadly game of deception and double-cross followed. Severus offered Albinus the title of Caesar, something reminiscent of Verus’ role under Marcus Aurelius, while he marched east to confront Niger. After an emphatic victory in Syria (ending with the pursuit and murder of Niger), Severus then reneged on his promises to Albinus. A decisive battle became inevitable. With the British legions behind him and others from Spain and Gaul, Albinus met Severus’ army at Lyons in 197. He lost.
How much of the British garrison also fought on the losing side that day is difficult to work out. Widespread changes of units in the auxiliary forts and on Hadrian’s Wall have been taken to mean that the likes of the Tungrians followed Albinus on his European adventures and were removed after his defeat. But there is no certain information. What was definite was Severus’ mastery of the Roman Empire, a mastery he would soon extend to the mutinous province of Britain.
He was the first African to sit on the imperial throne. Born in Lepcis Magna, now in modern Libya and one of the most substantial and impressive Roman sites anywhere, Severus was one of a growing number of powerful African senators. Clodius Albinus, from Tunisia, was another. Fertile, reliably productive and easily accessible by sea, the north African coastline had become wealthy and, by the end of the second century AD, its leading citizens were increasingly politically active. Severus’ rise had been steady, unspectacular. By the time he defeated Albinus at Lyons, he was fifty-one and beginning to become what the Historia Augusta described as crippled in the feet. Towards the end of his life, his gout forced the Emperor into the indignity of being carried on a litter. It is said that the pain from gout is especially acute, and it cannot have made the already exhausting business of establishing his authority any easier for Severus. Thought harsh by the Historia Augusta, he was probably moved to irritation more often than most by the growing pain in his feet.
From the very outset of his reign the new Emperor carefully cultivated the loyalty of the army. He awarded soldiers their first pay rise since the days of Domitian – a long wait, almost exactly a century. Three new legions were recruited in the east, the I, II and III Parthicae. And, perhaps most popular, Severus at last permitted soldiers to marry legally.
Retaining a healthy suspicion of factionalism in Rome, he took immediate radical action. After removing the uncontrollable Praetorians entirely and replacing them with a much larger and much more loyal bodyguard drawn from the Danube legions, Severus also augmented the Vigiles, the urban cohorts who policed Rome. He stationed one of the new legions in Italy, treating it like any other province, and he further insisted that the II Parthica be based at Albinum, only 30 kilometres from Rome. When he lay on his death bed in York in 212, the old emperor gave his sons some simple advice. Having risen and prospered with the support of the army, he told them to give money to the soldiers and ignore the rest.
Conquest also bound the legions to Severus and as soon as he had established himself, he led them on campaign in the east. The Parthian Empire was believed to be vulnerable, and by the end of 198 two new provinces had been created in Mesopotamia and Osrhoene, the first significant additions to the Empire since the time of Trajan. In North Africa an extensive frontier system of roads and forts pushed the barbarians further south and another new province was set up in Numidia, what is now eastern Algeria.
PARTHIA
Rome’s greatest rivals in the east are usually treated much in the same way as the barbarians of the north. Given very little historical personality, they seem like a buffer, a monolithic enemy. The Parthians took over Iran and Mesopotamia in the first century BC, and in 53 BC delivered a massive blow by defeating and killing Crassus at Carrhae, massacring many legionaries. Parthia appears to have been a federation of vassal kingdoms governed by a dynasty which originated amongst the Parni, semi-nomads from the north. Their capital place was at Ctesiphon on the lower Tigris and their armies boasted a heavy, armoured cavalry and squadrons of deadly horse-archers. Zoroastrianism seems to have been the state religion, although there was widespread toleration of other cults. Modern Zoroastrians are known as Parsees. The frontier with Rome ebbed and flowed between the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, until a new dynasty, the Sassanids, pushed further west in the third century, humiliating the Empire with the capture of the Emperor Valerian in 260.
The focus on the Parthian campaigns called for holding action at the farthest end of the Empire, in Britannia. In 197 Virius Lupus, the Governor installed by Severus, was forced to buy peace in the north. A very large bribe was handed over to the kings of the Maeatae and the Caledonii, and in return some sort of treaty was agreed and Roman prisoners returned. These last were probably captured during raids into the province. If Severus wished to prosecute his war against the Parthians in the east, then he had little opti
on but to buy time in the north-west of the Empire.
Dio Cassius had heard of these powerful native kingdoms:
the two most important tribes of the Britons [in the north] are the Caledonians and the Maeatae; the names of all the tribes have been practically absorbed in these. The Maeatae dwell close to the Wall which divides the island into two parts and the Caledonians next to them. Each of the two inhabit rugged hills with swamps between, possessing neither walled places nor towns, but living by pastoral pursuits and by hunting.
The Antonine Wall is the more likely of the two and the Maeatae have left gossamer traces of their ancient name in the hills around it. Five kilometres to the north of Stirling rises the steep rampart of the Ochil Hills, and the most prominent part of the western ridge is known as Dumyat. It means Fort of the Maeatae. Near Denny, looking south at the central sector of the Antonine Wall, is Myot Hill, another stronghold. The name outlasted the Empire and in his Life of Columba, written in the 7th century, St Adomnan described the war with the Maeatae. It was fought by the Gaelic-speaking King of Argyll, Aedan macGabrain, and Adomnan remembered that Columba prayed hard for victory for his fellow Gael. His prayers may not have been answered because, in the event, two of Aedan’s sons, Eochaid Find and Arthur, were killed. The same battle is recorded in the Irish Annals of Tighernach, but it is called the battle of Circenn. And Circenn was the name of the later Pictish province of Angus and the Mearns. All of which places the Maeatae where the place-names hint, just to the north of the Antonine Wall and in the Angus glens and coastal plain. The name itself is hard to parse – Maeatae may mean something routine like ‘the Great Ones’. Certainly great enough to extract cash from the coffers of the Roman Empire.
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