Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
List of Roman Emperors
Prologue: Romans and Barbarians
Episode One: The Poet
Episode Two: The Lawyer
Episode Three: The Soldiers
Episode Four: The Artist
Epilogue: Barbarians and Romans
List of Abbreviations
Notes and References
Index
Also by Derek Williams
Copyright
To Matthew, Haidi and April
LIST OF MAPS
1 Rome in Europe, 1st century AD
2 Greek Black Sea colonies
3 The Varian Disaster
4 Vespasian’s south-western campaign
5 Agricola’s north-eastern campaign
6 First Dacian War
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As with many a second book, Romans and Barbarians owes its inception to excessive zeal in writing the first. When sketches for a work on the Roman frontier (published in 1996 as The Reach of Rome) promised to be unmarketably long, associates and colleagues (especially Dr Andrew Dalby and my literary agent, Caroline Davidson) pointed to the lands and peoples outside the imperial boundaries as valid subjects for a book in their own right. Though hesitating to accept so strenuous a challenge, it was undeniable that certain incidents arising from the Roman-barbarian connection were rich in interest; and that, rather than forgo the fruits of long study, the best of them could be shaped into a second book of less studious but more human character. Owing to historical chance and the even more haphazard accidents of textual transmission (by which some accounts of ancient history survived the centuries, but so many did not), several of the most memorable events fell into a group approximating to the 1st century of the Christian era. This served both to limit the canvas and offer the unity of a single period: that of the first ten caesars, when Rome’s power reaches its zenith, and dominance over the outside world, begins, almost imperceptibly, to slip.
These two collaborators, then, are the first to be thanked. I acknowledge the assistance of a distinguished philologist, Anna Partington, who advised on a variety of origins and meanings. It is my loss that she was not consulted till the eleventh hour, when the book’s closing date was drawing near. I am also grateful to Samantha Hopkins for typing the text, to Alexander Stilwell and Imogen Olsen for perceptively reading and correcting it; to its Editor, Claire Evans, for co-ordinating and augmenting al our efforts; and to many friends whose reception of my earlier effort emboldened me to pursue its sequel. My work is especially fortunate in its Editorial Director, Carol O’Brien of Constable Ltd, whose view is that writing need not be the monopoly of career authors, nor history the sole province of professional scholars.
The book draws on mainstream Greek and Roman sources, supplemented by archaeological findings and recent thinking. Most of its authors are to be found in the Loeb Classical Library (original texts with translation), with some published in translated form by Penguin Classics. The Tristia and Ex Ponto appear in volume VI of the Loeb Ovid and, in freer form, in D. R. Slavitt’s Ovid’s Poetry of Exile (Baltimore, 1990). While grateful for the many insights afforded by parallel efforts, the author’s translation of these and other source material attempts to steer a middle course between the precision of the Loeb and the boldness of the less formal renderings.
Insofar as this book can claim originality it lies in the marshalling of random historical incidents (none unknown, but all deserving to be better known) into a single study. More unusual is its chosen ground, where classical and Iron Age scholarship meet. Throughout the 20th century there have of course been books on Rome in plenty, including many aspects of the empire and its provinces. More recently these have been complemented by a growing body of work on European late prehistory, notably the Celtic, Germanic and Sarmatian Iron Ages. While both zones of knowledge are indispensable, the student of antiquity’s no-man’s lands has largely been left to build his own bridges across the Rhine and Danube: rivers which once separated Roman from outsider and now sunder one academic discipline from another. Accordingly, the remarkably small group of works which emphasize interrelationship and examine the Mediterranean-Northern interaction has proved unusually valuable. These include H. D. Rankin’s The Celts and the Classical World (London, 1987) and B. W. Cunliffe’s Greeks, Romans and Barbarians (London, 1988).
In his Concluding Thoughts on the proceedings of a conference about the impact of the Roman invasion on Iron Age communities in Britain (BAR 73, 1979), Professor Cunliffe writes:
If one came away from the conference with only one impression it would be that Roman Britain is too important to be left to the Romanists! The divide between Romanist and prehistorian (or for that matter between Romanist and Dark Age specialist) is far too abrupt for the health of our discipline [ … ] It is, I think, above all the result of laziness, breeding a defensive arrogance [ … ] The disciplines have diverged to such an extent during the last half century that the mental effort required to master both is more than many scholars are prepared to make [ … ] There are however signs that this unfortunate divide is breaking down.
Nearly twenty years on, the divide remains. No thoroughgoing merger has occurred in research and the secondary literatures largely reflect these separate courses. Could it be that the origins of this divergence lie far deeper than our own century? Is it perhaps the legacy of Rome’s 400-year frontier, whose presence accentuated and perpetuated the distinction between the two worlds: one recoverable from the page, the other from the soil? The activities, motives and achievements of these two sets of peoples (those inside, and those outside the Roman empire) have survived in different proportions and degrees, with each unlockable in its own way. It behoves the ancient historian and the archaeologist of the future to carry both sets of keys.
Finally, I would like to thank those who helped me during the assembly of illustrations: in Germany our friends Otto and Annegret Kollecker for kind hospitality and much practical assistance; also Professor Wolfgang Schlüter for valuable advice and for arranging to make pictorial material available. My visit to Romania was greatly facilitated by the co-operation of the Museum of National History, Constantsa and the Adamclisi Museum, to whose officers I am indebted. Detail of photo-credits is given with the Photographic List.
LIST OF ROMAN EMPERORS
1st AND 2nd CENTURIES
Augustus
27 BC–AD 14
Tiberius
14–37
‘Caligula’
37–41
Claudius
41–54
Nero
54–68
Galba
68
Otho
69
Vitellius
69
Vespasian
69–79
Titus
79–81
Domitian
81–96
Nerva
96–98
Trajan
98–117
Hadrian
117–38
Antoninus
139–61
Marcus
161–80
&n
bsp; Commodus
180–92
Pertinax
193
Didius Julianus
193
Septimius
193–211
PROLOGUE
Romans and Barbarians
THROUGH WAR, TRADE, EXILE OR accident, Romans parted the curtain between their world and that of the outside peoples and occasionally left accounts of what they saw and did. Best known are Caesar’s. This book moves forward to the century following, presenting four episodes from the early imperial period, which straddle Europe from the Black Sea to the Scottish Highlands, offering portraits of Rome’s Sarmatian, German and Celtic neighbours. Its setting is the empire’s northern margins and beyond, where Mediterranean certainties falter and history hesitates. Though supplemented by recent findings and modern thinking, these glimpses from the rim of the classical world retain the almost accidental quality of snapshots, afforded us not only by Rome’s wide expansion but also through the chance presence of individuals, who ventured or were sent beyond the imperial pale. The first two episodes are dated to the ninth year of our era, but their context harks back to 27 BC: the accession of Augustus and the empire’s commencement. The final episode ends at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign in AD 117 when, with his emphasis on neutrality, large-scale intervention in barbarian affairs diminishes.
Mindful of the distinction between prehistory and history, based on the absence or presence of a written record, one is double-tongued from the outset. On the Roman side one speaks historically, of men and women with names, of known events and established dates; on the barbarian side prehistorically, of uncertainty and anonymity, of peoples called after their burial practices and cultures known from their type-sites. This reflects a deep division in the study of antiquity. On the one hand classics students are heirs to a long and noble textual tradition. Those who live in Europe are surrounded by reminders of Rome. If they are Westerners their languages and customs are studded with reference points. Quite different are students of the barbarians, whose discipline is recent, whose text is the soil and, though some of their languages live on in ours, whose pursuit is often of faint traces. Yet, allowing for these discrepancies, it is odd that those who study the Rhine’s left or Roman bank should seemingly require a different terminology from those studying its right or barbarian bank. At university they would be members of different faculties, attending different lectures and sitting different exams. Such is the compartmentalism of classical and Iron Age learning which has blurred our understanding of the north-south interaction and fogged our view of the Roman empire’s edges.
There are of course bridges across the scholastic river. Most prominent are the writings of Roman historians and geographers, crucial contributors to knowledge of the barbarian side: crucial because archaeology’s findings seldom match the power of language to penetrate minds and motives. This does, however, present a snag. While the Roman empire bequeathed words by the hundred thousand, those outside its European borders left none. Nor have barbarian oral traditions survived from this time. So classical authors became the spokesmen for the barbarian by default; and it could rightly be said that they hijacked our way of seeing his world. In comparing Roman and barbarian one must therefore allow for the partiality of the written sources; and it may help to remember that the Romans themselves were by no means superhuman, that they were not invariably ahead of their time and that where a gap between them and the barbarians existed it was sometimes smaller than Romanists might have one believe. What, then, was the nature of the Roman imperial state?
The 20th century is a time of unprecedented growth in the complexity of officialdom, dominated by organizations of all kinds, mesmerized by experts and obsessed with theory. Modern conditioning ill prepares us for the crudity of imperial Rome: successful beyond all rivals yet backed by rudimentary bureaucracy, unsupported by political or economic thought, without parties to give voice to new aspirations or the flexibility to produce new institutions. In a constitutional sense this amounted to underpowered machinery carrying majestic coachwork; a mighty empire propelled by a governmental engine more fitted to driving a petty province, chauffeured by one man. It was without ministers or ministries; without home, foreign or colonial offices; without chiefs of staff, admiralty or war office; with an army lacking a professional officer corps, its command based on the principle of impermanence and its officials hamstrung by the limits placed on personal power. It is not surprising that, according to Dio,1 Rome’s vital statistics could be contained in a notebook, carried perhaps on the emperor’s person.
The modern economist’s tendency to equate wealth with industry, and poverty with failure to industrialize, has no ancient counterpart. The Roman empire resembled the barbarian lands in being dominantly agricultural. Produce, rents and property accounted for at least 90 per cent of GNP. Farming was the basis of the state. Yet even here, though Rome did not lack the skills of husbandry, she was backward in applying invention to its processes. The Gauls had already devised a mechanical reaper: in effect a wooden comb mounted on wheels and drawn by animals. The corn stalks slid between the teeth and, reaching the end, the ears snapped off and fell into a tray. By contrast the Romans did not know the wheelbarrow. Farmers did not have the horse collar and oxen were used for heavy work. During the entire imperial period there were no major improvements in agronomy or farming technology. In the sense of yield in relation to work, Rome marked time. The problem was fiscal rather than nutritional. Because taxes on land payed for the empire’s defence, agriculture’s success or failure determined the size of the armed forces. These would continue to be modest in relation to Roman responsibilities. Without growth through productivity, wealth could only be augmented spatially; and avenues for easy conquest were now few.
Given the absence of inventiveness, Rome’s problems would not be solved – nor the barbarian decisively outclassed – by technical or commercial revolution. Industry was undercapitalized, its processes bucolic and its standing low. Here, as in agriculture, the existence of slavery removed the incentive to seek labour-saving processes. Considering that the empire was history’s biggest single market, with a unified currency, trading performance was poor. Manufacture, business and commerce would continue to account for no more than 10 per cent of wealth-creation. It would of course be wrong to exaggerate Rome’s limitations or to suggest that the barbarians were better off. The point is that neither in economic nor military terms was Rome likely to transform herself, to leave her neighbours standing, or so to dwarf the outside world that the barbarian danger would recede.
Neglect of industry, conservatism and lack of innovative thinking cast their shadow over learning; and it is little surprise that the twelve centuries of Rome produced no scientist to whom posterity is in serious debt.2 Education was literary and hidebound. There were no universities. In mathematics the numerical system and absence of the zero impeded advance. There was no notion of theoretical chemistry. Physics was strong in the study of stable forms but weak in dynamics, equipping its students to understand structure but not mechanism. Despite prodigious feats in aqueduct, bridge and sewerage construction, many techniques were crude. Most lamentable was metallurgy. Rome’s soldiers used untempered weapons, and in annealing, alloying, forging and welding, German products would eventually outclass Roman.3 The quality of machinery was woeful. Gearing was wooden. Vitruvius described the machine as ‘a combination of timbers, lashed together’.4 Progress had been made in crane and mill design, but there were no other applications of water power, and steam remained theoretical. With Romans strong on practice and Greeks on theory, the empire which bound them together was curiously weak at giving Roman substance to Greek speculation.
At sea there was no compass, sextant or chronometer. Captains clung to coasts. Better ships were being built in Scandinavia. There was no mechanical clock and concepts of time were hazy. Daylight was divided into twelve, with the hour varying in length between winter and summer. Though Rome dominated
the Mediterranean (and in due course the Black and Red Seas also), beyond Gibraltar the ‘outer ocean’ was a source of dread which she was slow to overcome, even in the instance of the English Channel. Other than the solitary advance by the Greek navigator Hippalus (1st century AD) in understanding the monsoonal winds and regularizing the India trade, disinterest in deep water meant there would be no such thing as Roman overseas discovery.5 Consequently she could never call a New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
In war Rome had no secret weapon. She prevailed not through technical advantage but by discipline, pertinacity, organization and reputation. She was in some respects inferior to her eastern rival Parthia (Iran); even to the steppe nomads, for the West was first to produce neither saddle, stirrup, girth, horseshoe, nor the reinforced shortbow (for use on horseback). One may guess at a Chinese or central Asian origin for the saddle because riders of the Bactrian camel, mounted between humps, are especially stable. The idea of a saddle, with its front and rear pommels, could then be applied to the horse; and footrests, attached to or hanging from it, became a natural appendage. Saddles and stirrups, absent from Trajan’s Column, may be seen on Chinese pottery horses at least as early as 600 BC. Without a saddle to steady the rider, mounted archery is ineffectual. Without stirrups, the lancer is projected backwards at the shock of contact. Without shoes, the horse is lamed by hard surfaces, forcing the rider to use the soft verges and reducing the advantage of Rome’s famous road network. Cavalry was valued for scouting and pursuit but was slow to be applied as a weapon of attack and manoeuvre.