Galba was praetor in 151 BC, and received by lot command of Further Spain. There had been heavy fighting in both of the Spanish provinces since the middle of the decade and Galba was not the only governor to suffer defeat at the hands of the Celtiberians or Lusitanians. Roman citizens were well motivated and tended to prove excellent soldiers, if they were given time to train and were competently led. The longer a legion remained in service the better it became, so that during the latter stages of the Second Punic War and the early conflicts with the Macedonians and Seleucids they proved themselves as good as or better than the hardened professionals they faced. There had been far less fighting in the middle of the second century BC, and as the veteran generation faded away, officers and ordinary soldiers alike came to the army with far less experience and a complacent belief that they would win simply because they were Roman. Defeats became much more common, and wars were only won because of Rome’s greater resources and persistence, and because the legions did learn from experience and improve.
Such setbacks shocked a Republic accustomed to victory. It is hard to see how Carthage presented any real military threat to Rome in 149 BC, but it is clear that many Romans were genuinely afraid of their old rival. When the inexperienced and overconfident Roman army and its commanders arrived in North Africa, the desperate enemy fought with determination and there was a string of reverses and failures which no doubt fed these fears. Polybius, who was in Rome during these years, reflected contemporary panic when he wrote of the struggle with the Celtiberians as the ‘fiery war’ because it raged almost unceasingly year after year. Rumours of this hard service against ferocious enemies reached Rome, and in 151 BC for once the sense of patriotism of its citizens wavered. Very few men appeared when the levy was called to raise an army to serve under the consul Lucullus in Nearer Spain. Only concerted encouragement and the very public volunteering of a popular young aristocrat eventually persuaded sufficient men to present themselves for the levy.5
These campaigns in both Spanish provinces were wars of raid and counter-raid, attacks on walled settlements and ambush. Battles were fought, but were often the result of sudden encounters and occurred in difficult terrain such as mountain passes. During these years marauding bands of Lusitanians ranged ever deeper into Further Spain, reaching the coast and at one point even crossing the Straits of Gibraltar into North Africa. Only rarely were the victims of their attacks Romans or Italians, for as yet there were relatively few of these in either province. Instead the targets were local communities allied to Rome. Galba had only a single legion and ala – together at most some 10,000–12,000 men and the normal force allocated by the Senate to a praetor. This was too small to defend so long and so open a frontier, and the problem only became harder when his strength was severely reduced by his defeat in 151 BC. The Romans could not hope to stop each raid as it came in, and the best they could do was try to catch the raiders as they withdrew, or launch reprisal attacks of their own against the Lusitanian settlements believed to be responsible. Every raid that succeeded – and still more every occasion on which the Romans caught the warriors but were defeated – encouraged more and larger bands to try their luck. We hear of the Lusitanians parading captured Roman army standards and other trophies around neighbouring communities and into Celtiberian territory to display their own power and encourage others to join them in fresh attacks.6
There were some lulls in the fighting, and for a while Roman reprisals prompted these same bands of Lusitanians to make peace with Galba’s predecessor, but when he returned to Rome they broke the treaty and went back on the warpath. In 150 BC Galba attacked, having done his best to make up his losses from the previous year by raising local levies, men who quite reasonably saw the Lusitanians as enemies. Simultaneously Lucullus, whose command had also been extended so that he was now a proconsul, drove into Lusitanian territory from another direction, capturing one walled settlement after another. His resources were larger, for he led the standard consular army of two legions and two alae. The twin assault convinced the Lusitanians that it was better to seek peace, and so their envoys went to Galba, claiming that lands too barren to support their numbers had made them return to raiding to take what they needed from richer neighbours.
The Roman governor appeared sympathetic, declaring that ‘poorness of soil and penury force you to do these things. But I will give my poor friends good land, and settle them in fertile country’. Galba was well thought of as an orator at Rome, although in this case he surely addressed the representatives via a translator. As far as we know he had never been to the Iberian Peninsula until he went out as governor of Further Spain, and few Roman governors had either the time or the inclination to learn local languages. Yet removing troublesome warriors and resettling them on better territory far from their homes was a technique that the Romans had used before and would use again, always with success. Taken away from their old territory and their old feuds, given the ability to support their families, and also no doubt aware that they were under the close observation of the authorities, raiders readily turned into peaceful farmers. Galba told the envoys to bring their people to an arranged spot so that they could surrender themselves to Rome’s power under promise of resettlement.7
They were told to come in three groups, each presumably composed of specific communities, clans or the followers of particular leaders so that the division was natural and easy to arrange. We do not know the names of any of the groups or leaders. One source says that they numbered as many as 30,000 in total, the women in the colourful dresses and long cloaks favoured in the area, and children and perhaps some elderly as well as the warriors. There were probably more men of military age than in a normal population, for these were raiders reliant on their swords because they did not have enough good land or animals. With them came their horses and flocks and all the possessions they were able to carry, including their weapons. Each of the three groups went to the appointed place and camped there to wait for the Romans to arrive and assign them to their new lands.8
Galba came to the first group and ordered the tribesmen to hand over their weapons. This was a normal mark of surrender, but also a likely moment of tension – in 1890 the spark that ignited the battle (or massacre depending on your viewpoint) at Wounded Knee. Weapons – and especially expensive items such as swords – were highly prized and emotionally important as a means of protection for a man and his family. Yet the Lusitanians obeyed, and handed over at least some of their military equipment. Galba then ordered his soldiers to surround the Lusitanian encampment with a ditch. Perhaps this was justified as protection for the tribesmen and their families, now at least in theory weapon-less, but it would surely have made them nervous, adding to the tension of the situation.9
Then the Roman governor sent soldiers into the camp and they began to kill. After all the occupants were dead or captured, Galba moved on to the second and third groups and treated them in exactly the same way. This was a massacre, and one not carried out at a distance with modern firearms, but at close range. The Roman and Latin soldiers, and their local allies, did most of the killing face to face, cutting and thrusting with their swords – another source tells us that in battle it was normal for shields and the chests of cavalry horses to be drenched in blood. Livy described the wounds inflicted by legionaries using the Spanish sword, with ‘bodies chopped to pieces . . ., arms torn away, shoulders and all, or heads separated from bodies, with the necks completely severed, or vitals laid open’. (Some of the grim pictures from the civil wars in Rwanda in the 1990s showing multiple machete wounds might best convey something of the horror of the scene.) If there was any fighting then it was one-sided, and Galba’s men slaughtered at will. These were the survivors of last year’s costly defeat at the hands of the Lusitanians, or local men from communities preyed upon by these very raiders, and so reluctance to obey the orders is neither hinted at by our sources nor likely. We do not know how many died, but the total was large enough to make this massacre infamous.
Substantial numbers survived to be sold into slavery, and only a few Lusitanians managed to escape in the confusion.10
Galba’s treachery was deliberate and premeditated, his orders to his soldiers clear. This was not some ghastly accident, where ill-judged or misunderstood words or actions ignited an already tense situation into an unplanned atrocity. Later the Roman governor claimed that he had acted in this way to pre-empt treachery on the part of the Lusitanians. His evidence was that they had performed a ritual where they sacrificed a man and a horse to the war god, something that it was their custom only to do before going on the warpath. Another source confirms this custom, and describes how they would take a war captive, swathe him in a cloak and then would stab him through it, watching how he fell and writhed to divine the future.
If Galba invented this story, then at least it suggests some attempt to understand the Lusitanians’ customs. Perhaps he was mistaken – or even misinformed, since his allied soldiers may well have encouraged harsh treatment of the surrendering tribes for their own reasons. It is also possible that the sacrifice had occurred, although it may not have reflected the hopes or opinions of all of the tribesmen. In the loose political structure of the Lusitanians some leaders or groups may well have resented the decision to make peace with Rome, or simply have not trusted Galba and the Romans – with justification as it turned out.11
The news of Galba’s actions provoked outrage at Rome, but not because of the massed slaughter and enslavement in itself. Such brutal methods were sometimes considered necessary in Rome’s wars, and fitting punishment for enemies of the Roman people. Roman attitudes to atrocity in warfare were essentially pragmatic, and mercy and cruelty judged on their effectiveness in bringing a conflict to a successful conclusion. Galba’s crime was to act in this way against an enemy who had already surrendered, wantonly breaking his own agreement with them. This was a breach of ‘good faith’ or fides, something on which the Romans prided themselves, choosing to believe that they dealt honestly and straightforwardly with others. In contrast they portrayed their old Carthaginian rivals as proverbially treacherous, just as the late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English maligned the Dutch with expressions such as ‘Dutch courage’.
Once again there was an element of practicality to this. A reputation for keeping agreements and treaties, for reliable support of allies and fair treatment of defeated enemies, helped to foster future negotiations with other peoples. There was also a religious dimension. The Republic’s prosperity and success in warfare were held to rely on divine favour, confirmed in careful and regularly repeated ritual to placate the gods. Many of Rome’s temples were built by victorious generals who claimed at a moment of crisis in battle to have vowed to honour a god or gods in this way. Pietas – a much stronger concept than the modern idea of piety, for it embraced reverence for parents and ancestors as well as gods – was one of the quintessential Roman virtues. Part of this special relationship with the divine powers was the belief that Romans behaved in a proper way, dealing fairly with others and only fighting just wars to defend themselves or their friends.12
Plenty of other imperial powers have had a similar belief in their own virtue. The massacre of the Lusitanians gives a far grimmer illustration of Roman expansion, but before we return to Galba’s story it is worth looking at the wider picture, and seeking to understand what caused and drove the creation of the Roman Empire.
RICHES AND REPUTATION – THE DRIVE TO EMPIRE
These are not new questions. Polybius began his Universal History around the middle of the second century BC – roughly contemporary with Galba’s activities in Spain, although sadly his account of this has been lost – and for him one theme loomed larger than any other: ‘For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government – a thing unique in history?’13
Polybius wrote his book in Rome, where he was one of many hostages sent from Greece by the Achaean League of cities as surety of the good behaviour of their home communities. For a long time a guest in the household of a prominent Roman aristocratic family, the historian met many of the leading figures of the Republic and accompanied the famous Scipio Aemilianus when he captured and destroyed the great city of Carthage in 146 BC.14
How the Romans overcame the Carthaginians in the three Punic Wars features prominently in Polybius’ work. He described the Roman military system in some detail, praising it for its order, discipline and also its encouragement of individual bravery. He gave even more importance to the Republic’s political system, which he saw as a well-balanced mixed constitution combining elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Unlike most Greek city-states, which were prone to periodic revolution and over time would cycle through all of these systems, the Romans enjoyed stability and a truly unusual level of political and social unity. Roman strengths helped to explain the Republic’s long-term success, but Polybius also looked at events elsewhere and in particular the rivalries of the kingdoms and states of the Hellenic world.
Modern scholars have accepted some of this view but, since it dealt with how rather than why, have for a long time looked elsewhere to explain Roman conquests. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – an era when modern empires had colonised much of the globe – many were ready to take the Romans’ own claims at face value. Faced with hostile neighbours, the Romans fought only to protect themselves, and so won conflict after conflict and acquired an empire almost accidentally. More recently the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme, a view that crystallised among English-speaking academics in the years following the Vietnam War, and especially among scholars who had become adults in the decades after the Second World War. Deep discomfort with warfare of any sort, let alone overseas adventures, pervades this scholarship, which portrayed Rome’s political system, society and economy as driving the Republic to near-continuous aggressive warfare that was almost a biological necessity. Any talk of defence was a sham, and the Romans were active and determined predators who attacked other peoples year after year.15
The studies of these years showed how central a role war-making played in the life of the Republic. Victory in war brought senators the greatest glory and wealth from plunder, and opportunities for command came only when a man reached the higher magistracies. Galba was one of six elected praetors in 151 BC, but there were only two consuls – in this case Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Aulus Postumius Albinus. Competition for this highest and most prestigious of posts was fierce, and simple arithmetic tells us that most praetors would not go on to hold the consulship. If a man was lucky enough to be given a provincial command as praetor in a province with an army – something no longer true of Sicily and sometimes Sardinia and Corsica – and if he faced a military threat – or at least something that could be presented as one – and if he was able to win a decisive victory, then it greatly increased his prospects of becoming consul. The consuls could expect to receive the most important commands of the year, but the larger scale of a war often made it difficult to win a complete victory before their twelve months of office had expired.16
Magistrates usually spent several months in Rome before travelling out to their province. In 153 BC the start of the political year was changed from 15 March to 1 January to allow them to reach a distant province and still be able to use the spring and summer months for campaigning. Extension of command as proconsul or propraetor was the exception rather than the rule, since each year brought a fresh crop of magistrates equally eager to win glory. With many governors in province for just a year, and scarcely any for more than two years, there was little time for a man to gain local experience and most were impatient for a quick success.17
In 264 BC an ambitious consul had helped to convince the Senate to intervene in Sicily, provoking the First Punic War. In 198 BC the consul fighting against the Macedonian King Philip V began negotiati
ons to end the war because he feared that he would be replaced and so a rival would gain credit for completing the victory. For a while he was willing to offer the king generous terms until he discovered that both consuls of 197 BC were to march against the Gallic tribes in northern Italy and thus his own command was to be extended by the Senate. He immediately broke off negotiations, renewed the conflict and was fortunate enough to win the decisive battle, after which he was able to impose a harsher peace treaty on Philip V and take for himself the credit for having won the Second Macedonian War. When the Third Macedonian War broke out in 172 BC, one of the year’s consuls was disappointed that the command in this war fell by lot to his colleague. Sent to Illyricum instead, he disdained the prospect of protecting a frontier against petty raids and instead began marching his army overland to Macedonia. A senatorial commission had to be sent to order him to return to his province.18
When Lucullus arrived in Nearer Spain in 151 BC he discovered that the war with the Arevaci, a Celtiberian people, had been concluded by his predecessor. Instead he attacked the Vaccaei, a tribal group allied to Rome. They were probably not wholly innocent victims, since they do seem to have raided other allied communities, but even so he had not been tasked with fighting them by the Senate. His methods were similar to those of Galba. Moving against the town of Cauca, he negotiated for the inhabitants to surrender on generous terms, but then broke his word and massacred many of them, selling the survivors into slavery. The next town surrendered and was granted terms which the governor kept, but the combination of cruelty and generosity failed to convince the third major community to submit when he approached it. Lucullus attacked and failed to take the town, so that his campaign ended in a sharp repulse.19
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