by Gwyn Morgan
Now let us turn to the military aspects of the “secret of empire” of which Tacitus talks. This may seem a more promising theme, not only because this secret should have been harder to conceal again, once it had been revealed, but also because the danger should have become more acute after Vespasian legalized his seizure of power by making acclamation by the troops a constitutional principle in the final clause of the “Law on Vespasian’s Powers.” This way of thinking has prompted weighty pronouncements that the civil wars of 68/69 “gave warning that if once an army had broken its oath of loyalty to an emperor, it might make light of its engagements to all future rulers.”1 Such assertions cannot be taken seriously. Although major upheavals followed Commodus’ murder in 192 and 50 years of near anarchy began with the assassination of Severus Alexander in 235, to see the upheavals of 68/69 as a precursor of these events plays fast and loose with the historical facts to a degree inexcusable even in the cliché-ridden “documentaries” on Rome that supposedly reputable television channels cannot resist airing. Conditions changed drastically in the intervening century or so, and this fact cannot be undermined by appealing to Tiberius’ famous remark that “he was holding a wolf by the ears.” It is irrelevant. The context in which Suetonius sets this dictum shows that Tiberius was talking, not about the armed forces specifically, but about running the empire, and not about the difficulties of hanging onto power but those of abdicating it. It was abdication that exposed an emperor to dangers on every side.2
So let us ask a very basic question: were the legionaries truly such ferocious specimens that an emperor had cause to fear them, should they escape from his control? Tacitus seems never to tire of portraying Vitellius’ legionaries as barbarians, either Germanic tribesmen or recruits who were no better than tribesmen. He draws similarly invidious contrasts between Antonius’ legionaries and the conduct of armies in the republican period, most notably in the story of the soldier who killed his brother and demanded a reward for it. These too are red herrings, based on two interrelated claims, first, that (some) imperial legionaries were so foreign that they qualified as barbarians with no awareness of Roman values, and second, that whatever the troops’ reasons for fighting, genuine devotion to Rome was not amongst them.
The legionaries of 68/69 were long-term professionals in an all-volunteer force, and to that extent they stood apart from the rest of the population. But no matter what precise level the recruits occupied in their communities beforehand, many still came from Italy, and most of those who did not were drawn—as inscriptions indicate—from the more civilized and settled areas of provinces like Spain, southern Gaul or Syria. The troops stationed on the Rhine and Danube frontiers had little contact with civilians, it is true, and so little awareness of or time for the usages of polite society. But this was not, as Tacitus seems to believe, a function of their being legionaries. After all, he depicts Mucianus’ legionaries in Syria as model citizens. Yet they were no more and no less Roman than the men on the northern frontiers, even if their being billeted in the towns made them more considerate of civilians. As for the legionaries’ supposed lack of devotion to Rome, the troops expressed their allegiance in much the same way in republic and principate. In the early principate, from Tiberius’ reign on, the troops swore an oath to the emperor on 1 January every year. But the troops had sworn allegiance to their generals in the republic too, not to the state as such. It had been the loyalty of the general to the republic that had formed the link between troops and state. And just as the failure of that link had produced the warlordism that destroyed the republic, so the failure of that link produced four emperors in 68/69. To us the imperial legions may look more threatening than the short-term, semimercenary forces of the late republic, because they formed a standing army permanently on call. In fact, they were less of a threat—unless they were both thoroughly discontented and given a strong lead by a dissident legionary legate or general. Then, and only then, the disintegration of their ordered world encouraged them to gratify their own transient, short-term interests as well.
This is why there is no convincing evidence that the Flavian emperors—let alone their successors—were hagridden by fears that the legions would turn on them. The Flavians undeniably paid more attention and gave more consideration to the armed forces—legions and praetorian guard alike—than previous rulers had done, but this was as it should be.3 It was no credit to Nero that one reason for Vitellius’ being thought eager to become emperor lay in his showing unusual concern for the welfare of his officers and men. And it was no more credit to Galba that Otho was able so easily to suborn noncommissioned officers in the praetorian guard. The Flavians learnt the lesson. Not only did they restore discipline, they also took care to ensure that the troops had better quarters (sometimes of necessity, but not invariably so), that they had all the necessary equipment to carry out their duties, and that the number of troops in the ranks approximated the number on the rolls. Domitian even gave the legionaries a pay raise in 83, the first they had received since Julius Caesar’s day.
It is no obstacle that there was a revolt against Domitian in 89. Although the evidence is scanty, it is reasonably certain that its instigator, Lucius Antonius Saturninus, governor of Upper Germany, took action because the emperor had denounced him publicly as a “queer” (scortum). The rebellion certainly never amounted to anything. When Saturninus came out into the open on 1 January 89, he was supported by only two of the four legions in his province, those stationed with him in Mogontiacum, and he as good as took them hostage by seizing the military chest that contained their savings. Furthermore, the revolt was crushed and Saturninus killed inside two weeks, and neither of the legions involved was punished severely. They may not even have fought hard for him in the first place. They undoubtedly continued as functioning units, even if they were shifted to the Danube frontier a year or so later.
The praetorians, the “flower of Italy’s youth” as Otho calls them in two of his Tacitean speeches, are usually charged with venality, largely because Tacitus harps so relentlessly on their resentment at Galba’s failure to pay the donative Nymphidius had promised. Again the picture is overdrawn. It was not the donative alone that induced the guard to abandon Nero, nor could they be persuaded to abandon Galba for Nymphidius. And if they ended up deserting Galba for Otho, Galba was hardly the innocent victim solely of a lust for cash. Otho paid no donative to the guard as a whole until after the mutiny a month or more into his reign. Vitellius never paid them one, though he compensated them in other ways. And Vespasian gave the guard only a minimal donative. By the same token, fear did not lead Vespasian to reduce the guard to nine cohorts of 500 men, the establishment set up originally by Augustus. Had that been his motive, he would never have allowed any Vitellians to keep their membership in the new units, as inscriptions prove that he did, and no more would Domitian have added a tenth cohort. What animated Vespasian was an economy drive. When the annual pay of a praetorian before 83 was a minimum of 750 denarii (HS 3,000), reducing their numbers from 12,000 to 4,500 saved at least HS 22.5 million a year. This may have been a drop in the bucket compared to the 40,000 million sesterces Vespasian claimed to need to put the empire back on its feet, but it was a large drop, and it could be done quickly, whereas the empire-wide census he launched to uncover fresh sources of revenue took time to conduct.
This does not end the matter. Not only did the praetorian guard not cause trouble for Vespasian and his sons. They were neither involved in nor gratified by the palace intrigue that led to Domitian’s murder in September 96. In fact, they wanted the assassins executed, but their two prefects took a different view. Whether they participated in the plot or merely gave it their blessing, they left the guardsmen leaderless. In October 97, however, Nerva appointed a new prefect, Casperius Aelianus, and he took the men’s side. This produced a mutiny, in which the guard clamored for and at last secured the punishment of the conspirators. It also persuaded Nerva to adopt as his heir the nearest military commander, Trajan
in Upper Germany. Understandably, these developments have been seen as a crisis that both revived memories of Nymphidius’ antics in 68 and prompted Tacitus to compose the Histories. But no matter how attractive this scenario may look, it is unconvincing. Like Galba, Nerva was in his sixties, but since he was also a compromise—and compromised—emperor, his grip on power was much weaker. So his adopting Trajan was indeed part of a major power play, but that power play took place within the senatorial aristocracy. The mutiny was a sideshow, and there is no evidence that Nerva had to pay the guardsmen a donative to restore order or regain their loyalty.4
Too much, it seems clear, has been read into Tacitus’ comment that “an emperor could be made elsewhere than in Rome.” He was not asserting that emperors would be made elsewhere than in Rome on a regular basis, nor that they should be. So if we are to draw valid conclusions from the wars of 68/69, we might do better to consider another of his comments, that the reigns of Nerva and Trajan brought in an era when, for the first time in years, “you can think what you like, and say what you think.” Fact or compliment, this statement highlights an altogether more significant theme, the servility of the senate under the emperors. It was, after all, from the senate that most of the senior officers and commanders of Rome’s armed forces were drawn, and if these men had not the intestinal fortitude to stand up to their emperor, there was virtually no prospect that the rankers would.
Though the senate had never lacked for time-servers, right up to the last days of the republic senior members felt free to express their opinions on important matters. Although Octavian claimed repeatedly that Cleopatra, aided and abetted by the renegade Antony, was planning to establish a tyranny in Rome, for example, both consuls for 32 B.C. and some 200 senior men left the city to join these purported enemies of the state. After Actium, by contrast, senators proved more reluctant to voice their real thoughts even on trivialities. Their behavior so frustrated Augustus that he would flounce out of debates in a huff (or so Suetonius says), and led Tiberius sourly to declare the senate a body of men born to serve rather than to rule. The death of Nero and the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty produced no change, as Tacitus demonstrates by devoting so much space in the Histories to the senate’s showing signs of life mostly when an emperor was not present to breathe down its collective neck. In these interludes, as he also makes clear, senators indulged repeatedly in irresponsible, score-settling debates. This was just about all they did in the months between Nero’s suicide and Galba’s arrival in Rome, during Otho’s absence in the north, between Otho’s death and Vitellius’ arrival in the city, and between Vitellius’ execution and the arrival of Mucianus.
This is not to imply that there were no powerbrokers behind the scenes (Mucianus was a prime example in Vespasian’s reign) or, for that matter, that the knights were any more enterprising: they just lacked an assembly in which to exhibit such foolishness. For our purposes, the important point is the effect this behavior pattern had on senators and knights when the emperor sent them off to govern provinces or entrusted them with military commands. Two tendencies emerged, both of them extreme. Most of these men never considered defying their emperor. Hence, for example, they readily turned over to the authorities the letters Vindex sent out in the winter of 67/68. But a handful went to the opposite extreme. No more hostile than their peers to the principate as institution, they sensed weaknesses they could exploit and, determined to become powerbrokers in their own right, they emerged as the loose cannons of their day. The majority, unsurprisingly, died in the attempt, among them Vindex, Titus Vinius, Fabius Valens, and Nymphidius Sabinus. But four survived. The risk-taking Cornelius Fuscus settled down and became prefect of the guard under Domitian. Helvidius Priscus resumed his career as the noisiest critic of every emperor from Nero on, until the otherwise equable Vespasian put him to death in 75. And Aulus Caecina and Antonius Primus were sidelined. Vespasian may perhaps have made them members of his advisory council, the consilium principis, but if so, he acted probably on the adage that one should keep one’s friends close but one’s enemies closer. Like Verginius Rufus, no loose cannon but for all that a man who had once been thought worthy of the throne, they received no other employment. Caecina would last ten more years before being executed by Titus in 79, allegedly for involvement in a conspiracy against Vespasian in his last days. Antonius was living in retirement in his hometown of Tolosa (Toulouse) around the close of Domitian’s reign. And it was Nerva who resurrected Verginius Rufus, and Tacitus who delivered the funeral oration over the man 30 years after his “15 minutes of fame.”
Against this we have to set the fact that Vespasian and his sons promoted a slew of men whose records were no less suspect, but whose conduct was at least more submissive. Some owed their status to Nero, like Rubrius Gallus, who sold out Nero to Galba and Vitellius to Vespasian, and yet was given the command in Moesia after Fonteius Agrippa’s death. Some had been brought to the fore by Galba, for example, the two “rich old men” Tampius Flavianus and Pompeius Silvanus. Neither emerged creditably from the upheavals of 68/69, but each received a second consulship. There were Othonians like Suedius Clemens, the commander of the maritime expedition. He was prefect of the camp (praefectus castrorum) to the two legions stationed in Egypt by November 79, as we know from a graffito scratched on the statue of Memnon at Thebes (Karnak). There were Vitellians like Caecina’s co-conspirator, Lucilius Bassus, who was made not only a senator but governor of Judaea in 71. There were even close associates of Antonius, most notably his right-hand man, Arrius Varus. Varus would fall from grace, but it looks as if he was brought down by score settling on the part of the daughter of Corbulo, the general he had traduced in Nero’s reign. Another formidable personality, Domitia Longina became Domitian’s wife in 70. Even so, it seems clear that Vespasian thought he had found a much simpler, more practical solution to the problems of 68/69 than modern theoreticians care to embrace, namely, to ensure that important posts in the new regime were not given to manifest loose cannons or—in Verginius’ case—to men who had ever been thought worthy of the throne. We lack the evidence to declare his diagnosis either wrong or even wrong-headed.
Appendix 1:
The Principal Sources for 68/69
Rather than clutter the main narrative with details on the background of the ancient literary sources for the Year of the Four Emperors, I have tried to include in this appendix enough material to enable readers to orient themselves, should they wish to pursue questions of fact or interpretation raised by my handling of these writers. The five surviving sources—Josephus, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio—are discussed in the chronological order in which they wrote. I have added brief remarks on two lost accounts, the so-called common source, and the memoir by Vipstanus Messalla.
Josephus
Most of our information on Joseph ben Matthias (Titus Flavius Josephus) derives from his own writings, and on sensitive issues they are as equivocal as was his behavior at the time. He was born in Jerusalem in 37/38, about a year after Tiberius recalled Pontius Pilate from Judaea. The son of a priest and, on his mother’s side, of royal blood too, he was given a thorough grounding in his religion, at the end of which he threw in with the Pharisees. In 64 he traveled to Rome for the first time, to help some priests who had been sent for trial before Nero, but the main effect of his mission was to convince him of Rome’s might. So when the Jewish Revolt broke out in 66, he tried at first to persuade his compatriots not to rebel and, when that failed, to take part in such a way as to control and guide their fanaticism (his words). Hence he commanded a rebel force in Galilee in the first half of 67. When Vespasian advanced, most of the troops deserted, and Josephus and the others willing to stand their ground took refuge in Jotapata. The town fell in July, after a 47-day siege, and Josephus was made prisoner. Taken before Vespasian, he prophesied that the Roman would “soon” become master of the world. The story appears also in Suetonius and Dio, but Josephus adds that Vespasian was unimpressed at first. Only afte
r he had been proclaimed emperor in July 69 was Josephus set free. He witnessed Titus’ sack of Jerusalem in September 70, and he accompanied him to Rome. There, as a Roman citizen and a Flavian pensioner, he devoted the rest of his life to literature, dying shortly after 100, early in the reign of Trajan.
Four of his works survive, all in Greek. The Jewish War (Bellum Iudaicum) was written originally in Aramaic and was published, with Vespasian’s encouragement, soon after the events it described. The version we have is a second edition, written in Greek between 75 and 79 to reach a wider audience. He returned to the subject in the last part of his Antiquities of the Jews (Antiquitates Iudaeorum), a work in 20 books, the first edition of which appeared in 93/94, late in Domitian’s reign. And on this there followed two apologetic works written around 100, a Life (Vita) in which he defended his role in the Jewish Revolt (this was attached to a second edition of the Antiquities); and the Against Apion (Contra Apionem, not his choice of title), which defended the Jewish religion against the anti-Semitism to which Greek rowdies were especially prone. No self-respecting Greek could deny that Greeks were the “chosen people,” not Romans, and certainly not Jews.