Augustus, page 48
The better-off were required to play their part as leaders, both for the armies already in existence and for the new levies. Augustus asked for volunteers, especially from young members of the senatorial and equestrian orders. Over the years he had encouraged a much stronger sense of identity among the equites, making Caius and Lucius their nominal leaders and reviving the annual parade of those traditionally eligible for military service as cavalrymen and restricting it to those of suitable age and physical fitness. These days they served not as horsemen but as commanders of auxiliary units and as tribunes in the legions, and in AD 6 some volunteered and most of the rest were willing to go if commanded by the state. A few were not, and one notorious case involved an equestrian father who cut off the thumbs of his sons to render them physically unfit for service. Augustus had him tried, condemned and punished by being sold as a slave, as well as auctioning off his property. The man belonged to one of the companies of publicani – the firms who continued to take on many state contracts and levy some taxes – and when his colleagues began bidding for him, the princeps instead sold the man at a token price to one of his freedmen. The condemned man was to be sent to a country estate and held in servitude, but not otherwise mistreated.24
The reluctance of enough men of all classes to serve the state was part of wider problems. Fire continued to be a serious risk to all the inhabitants of Rome, and several recent outbreaks prompted Augustus to create seven cohorts of vigiles, each one responsible for two of the City’s regions and acting as a fire brigade and night patrol. Most of the recruits were freedmen, reflecting not just the wider population of Rome, but also the shortage of manpower of all kinds at this time. A tax of two per cent on the sale price of slaves was created to fund the new service. There were also food shortages, presumably caused by bad harvests or problems in transporting the grain to Rome. Excess mouths – including gladiators and slaves for sale – were banned from coming within 100 miles of the City. At the same time some public business was suspended, senators were permitted to stay in the country and miss meetings of the Senate and an exemption was made so that votes would be valid even if a quorum was not present.25
Unsurprisingly, these worried times produced murmurs of discontent. Anonymous pamphlets circulated, more or less openly hinting at revolution. It is hard to say whether they targeted the princeps or more those around him – or even other magistrates and senators who were held to blame or simply unpopular. Dio reports that people attributed much of the agitation to a certain Rufus – he calls him Publius while Suetonius names him Plautius – but that most believed he was too obscure and lacking in intelligence to be the real planner. Modern scholars are tempted to link some of this activity to those who felt that they would do better if Livia’s descendants lost power in favour of Julia and her family. Dio does see the new inheritance tax as one of the sources of discontent and, given that this only affected those possessed of substantial property, historians suspect a degree of political manipulation by supporters of Julia’s family hoping to focus wider discontents. However, such suggestions remain conjectural.26
Shortages continued for some months, prompting Augustus to refuse permission for public feasts to be held on his birthday. He set several former consuls to improve the grain supply system, and in the meantime gave at his own expense additional rations of food to those receiving the public dole in Rome. Gradually the food supply recovered to more normal levels, and the times became more suitable for celebration. Gladiatorial games were held in memory of Tiberius’ brother Drusus and presided over by Germanicus and Claudius. The latter was physically weak, inclined to twitch and stammer, and clearly unfit for the military demands of any public career. His mother described him as a ‘prodigy, left unfinished by nature’ and was fond of insulting people by saying that they were ‘as stupid as my son Claudius’. Yet at this stage he was considered capable of appearing in public, although at the games he was swathed in a heavy cloak rather than the usual toga, probably to conceal his appearance. Drusus was again invoked when Tiberius dedicated his rebuilt Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum, giving his name in this case as Tiberius Julius Caesar Claudianus to celebrate his former family as well as the name of Caesar.27
JULIA’S CHILDREN
It is hard to say much about Postumus’ activities in the years following his adoption. He came of age in AD 5, publicly but without any great fanfare – although even this was better than the haste with which Claudius was stealthily whisked under cover of darkness to and from the Temple of Mars Ultor when he came of age. The family had yet to make up its mind how far Claudius was to be exposed to the public gaze. Postumus was still young, so perhaps his lack of any public role is unsurprising. Unlike Claudius he was strong and athletic, but our sources all claim that there were serious doubts about his character and intelligence, hinting vaguely at a violent temper and unspecified flaws of conduct. It may be worth remembering that he was not yet ten at the time of his mother’s disgrace, and saw her exiled while his brothers were given rapid promotion and lavished with praise, but he was not. Perhaps he began to press for more recognition.28
In AD 5 Augustus reformed the voting of the Comitia centuriata, adding ten new centuries drawn from the highest classes and named in honour of Caius and Lucius. These would now vote first, setting an example that the rest of the centuries were likely to follow given the Roman electorate’s fondness for backing winners. The change was probably coincidental and part of the longer-term efforts to make state institutions function more smoothly, but it would have done a lot to prevent a repeat of the incident in 6 BC, when the centuries had elected Caius Caesar as consul even though he was not a candidate. It is more than possible that ambitious individuals saw in Postumus an opportunity to aid their own rise. Perhaps the youth spoke or acted unwisely, and gradually he lost Augustus’ confidence. In AD 7 it was expected that the seventeen-year-old would at last receive a public role and be given command of some of the newly raised troops, with instructions to march them to Pannonia and join the campaign. Instead the job was given to Germanicus.29
Postumus’ disgrace seems to have come in stages. In the first he was reprimanded by being sent to Surrentum (modern Sorrento) on the Bay of Naples, where he spent most of his time fishing. Then Augustus formally revoked his adoption, and instead of being a Caesar he returned to being a Vipsanius Agrippa. The property he had inherited from his father did not go with him, and Augustus used most of it to top up the aerarium militare. Postumus complained bitterly about this, and in particular attacked Livia, so that in the end he was exiled to the tiny Island of Planasia near Corsica and kept under strict guard. Suspicion that Tiberius and his mother were keen to dispose of a potential future rival was already circulating in the ancient world, and continues to attract scholars. There may be some truth in it, but more likely Postumus wrought his own destruction. Augustus may well have been guided by his wife in this, as in so many things, but he had watched the boy grow up and should have had a good idea of his nature. It is a mistake to claim that the family were willing to tolerate supposed mental as well as physical weakness in Claudius and thus would have permitted stupidity or worse in Postumus – Claudius was not Caesar’s son or considered as one of his successors.30
As the princeps’ only grandson, Postumus could not easily have been ignored in AD 4 unless he was put away somewhere. Augustus may already have doubted the boy’s character, but hoped that he would learn and grow into a stable and capable man. The lack of any public role for him even after the adoption suggests general caution far more than the jealous suspicion of Tiberius or his mother. When Postumus failed to improve, Augustus rejected him. Tacitus later noted that the youth committed no actual crime, and it is hard to say whether any one act sparked his repudiation. Political rivalry no doubt played a part, but the judgement of our sources that his character and behaviour were behind his exile is probably right.31
Germanicus took the troops to Pannonia in AD 7 and so it was he who began to prove himself as a soldier. His role was still a junior one, and other contingents of recruits were marched to the area under separate command – the historian Velleius Paterculus proudly tells us that he led one of these, serving in the field instead of performing his tasks as quaestor for the year. Tiberius was in overall charge, having hurried to the front in the previous year. It was a tough campaign, and attacks on nearby provinces by neighbouring peoples drew away some of the Roman forces sent to quell the rising – another indication of just how fortunate the Romans were that Maroboduus saw more advantage in keeping the peace than exploiting a temporary weakness. From this point on he remained a staunch ally of Rome and bolstered his own position as a result.32
The fighting was on a grand scale and often bitter, especially since many of the rebels had served in the past as auxiliaries with the Romans. They understood Latin, knew how the legions operated, and were themselves far more disciplined than most tribal armies. On several occasions Roman field armies were checked and forced to withdraw, or only prevailed after suffering heavy losses, while more than one beleaguered garrison was relieved just in time to save it. At one point Tiberius found himself at the head of the largest Roman army concentrated since the civil wars, consisting of ten legions, seventy auxiliary cohorts, fourteen auxiliary cavalry alae, 10,000 veterans – probably in this case including men recalled to the colours and not simply those in the last phase of their military service – as well as allies supplied by the Thracian king and other friendly leaders. This force represented more than a third of the entire Roman army, and was larger than any of the armies ever led by Julius Caesar in the course of his campaigns. Tiberius quickly realised that it was too large to supply and control effectively, so after a short time split it into several separate field forces. Even so it did not include all the troops sent to deal with the rebellion. Altogether fifteen legions saw service against the Pannonians and Dalmatians, along with comparable numbers of auxiliaries. Thus comfortably more than half of the entire army took three years of tough campaigning to suppress the rebellion in one province.33
It was the most serious war since Actium and a good deal harder fought. Rhetoric about rebel armies marching on Rome was fanciful, but even so this was a conflict unlike all the other smaller wars fought since 30 BC – far larger and much harder to win. For a while – perhaps only a short while – it challenged the very basis of Augustus’ leadership, which boasted of constant, inevitable victory granted by the gods to the Roman people and its princeps because their virtue and piety deserved it. Much of this was propaganda, but it is hard for such constantly repeated themes not to be absorbed even by those they were designed to serve. The prospect that they might lose a war and province was shocking, and readily implied that they no longer deserved to win. This as much as anything else helped to explain Imperator Caesar Augustus’ near-collapse at the start of the war: everything he had created seemed under threat. Even after he recovered his nerve, there were still signs of fear which later expressed themselves as vocal impatience that Tiberius was not winning the war sufficiently quickly.34
Augustus celebrated his seventieth birthday in AD 7 and there were clear signs that age was catching up with him, and that his health was failing. In the following year he began to reduce his workload. Three former consuls were appointed to deal with the bulk of embassies from allied leaders and communities who constantly trooped to Rome to present petitions or simply give praise to the princeps. He attended the Senate far less often and, although he continued to preside over judicial hearings, these were now convened in part of his complex on the Palatine rather than in public buildings. At elections he no longer attended and showed his support for favoured candidates, but simply had his recommendations written out and displayed for the voters to see. Yet we should not exaggerate his frailty, and there were traces of the old determination. In AD 8 – and possibly in the other years – he travelled as far as Ariminum (now Rimini) on the border with Illyricum so that he could be near the theatre of operations.35
Food shortages occurred again in AD 7, leading to more disturbances. The following year’s elections were so badly disrupted by riots that they could not be held, and so Augustus appointed all of the magistrates. As far as we can tell this was caused by rivalries between the candidates, independent of any factions supporting either Tiberius and his family or the discredited Postumus. Yet in AD 8 Julia, the daughter of Agrippa and Julia, was publicly condemned for adultery and, like her mother before her, exiled to an island. In this case only one lover was named, Decimus Junius Silanus, and he was informed that he had lost Caesar’s friendship and told that he should go into ‘voluntary’ exile. The fate of Julia’s husband is unclear, but since adultery was the charge he was presumably still alive. In spite of a consulship in AD 1, Lucius Aemilius Paullus received no senior command and is listed by Suetonius among the conspirators who plotted against Augustus. No date is given, nor are the details of what he did known, but if he was not already in exile then this would have followed at the time of his wife’s disgrace. Julia gave birth in the months to follow, but Augustus refused to let the child be raised and had it exposed – a grim reminder of the head of the household’s powers as well as those of the princeps.36
Caught up in the whole business was the poet Ovid, who faced no formal charge or trial, and was simply instructed to take himself off to the city of Tomi on the Black Sea and stay there until told otherwise. This was the very fringe of the empire – and indeed of Greco-Roman culture itself – and from there he wrote a succession of poems pleading for pardon and recall. Sadly, but unsurprisingly given the sensitive nature of the affair, these add frustratingly little to our picture of the scandal. Ovid was blamed for some indiscretion, probably seeing something he should not have, and more generally for the corrupting influence of his Ars Amatoria – a poem now in circulation for at least a decade and thus scarcely topical. The elderly Augustus, failing in strength, recently frightened and now inclined to quicker rages, may well have felt that this jovial celebration of affairs outside marriage was a bad influence on the young, but the probability is that the other offence was more serious.37
All in all, the whole episode remains obscure, and it is understandably tempting for scholars to see a political plot concealed beneath the sexual scandal, especially since Paullus is named as a conspirator. Suggestions as to the nature of the intrigue have varied, depending on whether or not he is assumed to be still in Rome; but invariably the episode is seen as an attempt to challenge the dominance of Tiberius and his relations for the future leadership of the state. An intriguing suggestion is that Julia and Silanus plotted to marry – perhaps even held a ceremony which Ovid may have witnessed – and in some way force the princeps to advance his granddaughter’s new husband to high office. Yet this is guesswork and, however appealing, other scenarios could equally well fit the meagre facts. If there was a plot, then it got nowhere and was probably naively conceived and executed from the very start. Julia may well have felt marginalised, but whether this led to her flinging herself into an affair or dangerous political talk – or both – is impossible to say. In later years, Augustus referred to the two Julias and Postumus as his ‘three boils’ or ‘three ulcers’, and perhaps their crimes really had more to do with their failure to live and act as he would wish than ambitious quests for power.38
The outcome was the same, and Livia’s family line would dominate the succession, perhaps as much by chance as victory in a clandestine struggle for power. In AD 9 Tiberius returned to Rome and the award of a well-earned triumph for his defeat of the rebellion in the Balkans. He had done his job thoroughly if slowly, and in the later stages may have used as much conciliation as force. At least one of the senior rebel leaders was spared, and that was a rare thing in any war, let alone a rebellion. A surer proof is the fact that the risings were never again repeated, and that these regions remained stable and increasingly prosperous parts of the Roman Empire for centuries to come. The crisis seemed to be over, and peace through victory could reign again. Then news arrived of an appalling military catastrophe in Germany.
22
PAX AUGUSTA
‘The pax augusta, which has spread to the regions of the east and of the west and to the bounds of the north and of the south, preserves every corner of the world safe from the fear of brigandage.’ Velleius Paterculus, early first century AD.1
Arminius appeared to be a shining example of the Roman genius for absorbing conquered peoples and convincing them – or at least their leaders – that they were better off supporting Roman rule and joining the conquerors. Born somewhere around 18–15 BC, he belonged to the royal family of a Germanic people named the Cherusci, whose lands lay east of the Rhine near the River Weser. Quite a few other noblemen also carried the blood of kings, and in any case kingship played only a minor role in the loose social and political structures of the tribes, so royal birth did not guarantee supremacy. Arminius’ father Segimer was simply one of the influential men vying for power among his people. It is possible that he fought against the Romans in the wars of the last years of the first century BC. If so, then he soon submitted to the invader, and it is equally possible that from the beginning Segimer saw an alliance with Rome as a means to gain advantage over his local rivals. Plenty of leaders throughout the world reacted in the same way, seeing the might of the legions as something to harness for their own ends rather than as a threat.
