Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge

by Derek Williams

  By contrast Roman excellence lay in infantry training and skills. To these could be added developments in torsion artillery, though throwing-weapons were only to prove decisive in sieges. The third Episode will show scorpio and ballista in action. Complementing military prowess was a talent for political cohesion (unknown to the barbarians and denied the bickering Greeks) plus an impressive record in the manipulation and co-option of other nations. Indeed this is how the juggernaut was made, for more manpower than was ever born in Central Italy would be required to create and serve imperial Rome. Nor must urban development and civil engineering achievement be forgotten, most memorably road building, as well as spectacular accomplishments in architecture and literature.

  Accepting this, but recalling her institutional and technological backwardness, Rome’s deficits almost outweigh credits. None the less, in terms of reputation, these were the credits that counted. Her military and diplomatic talents produced the territorial, and her skills in words and stone the cultural results which deeply impressed later ages, perpetuating the image of a marble Rome in a muddy world and leading to emphasis on short periods of peak achievement at the expense of two millennia of Roman and Byzantine history as a whole. It is difficult to think of another civilization where so much attention has been given to so small a part of its span.

  What are the conclusions of this profit-and-loss account? Is it feasible to see Rome merely as the culminating Iron Age power; or is there some factor which appears to distinguish her from the barbarians in kind, even to give her an exceptional place in the ascent of man? This is not a question which troubled the Romans. The answer was implied on every page of their history. The gods had a reason when they put Rome at Italy’s centre, Italy at the Mediterranean’s centre and the Mediterranean at the centre of the world. We, too, have seldom questioned Roman superiority over the outside nations, seeing it as a basic ingredient of the Western heritage. In what, then, might the Roman contribution be said to lie? Doubtless in the sphere of multinational dominion and superstate governance; in the accumulated experience arising from the breadth and variety of this management; plus the lessons learned from its responsibilities, such as co-ordination of parts and grasp of long-term goals. Added to this are contributions to civil order, internal stability and (surprisingly for a structure welded by war) to international peace. Finally there is Rome’s role as the conduit by which Greek thought and Judaeo-Christian belief reached the future West. In all the above respects it is the Roman empire’s extent and longevity, as much as the talents and efforts of its individuals, which permitted enrichments to civilization unmatched by tribes lacking literacy, unity, or continuity.

  By the accession of Augustus, Rome owned most of the Mediterranean seabord, Gaul to the Rhine and Syria to the Euphrates. Acquisition had not been systematic or based on a sustained vision. A torrent of territory had fallen to the Republic during its later years, the result of spectacular victories by generals like Pompey and Caesar. In fact they had been moves in a power game, ambitions on a collision course both with the Senate and each other. These were the forces over which the consuls lost control, compelling Rome toward the thirty-five-year débâcle of dictatorship, assassination and civil war which encompassed the Republic’s dissolution; leading to the emergence of Octavian, Julius Caesar’s great nephew and heir, as Rome’s first emperor (later to be named Augustus).

  Including the additions made by Augustus and his successors, the empire would be among history’s more extensive, covering three-and-a-half million square miles of land and sea, with a land area about the size of the United States and Alaska. This Augustus managed with a peculiar mixture of strength and tact, wishing to be known by no more imposing a title than princeps (first citizen), though posterity, dismissing subterfuge, bluntly called him emperor: first of some seventy holders of that office between his taking power in 27 BC and the fall of Rome some five centuries later. From princeps there comes the term ‘principate’, meaning either the reign of an individual emperor or the early imperial period generally. This regime, described by Tacitus as ‘neither of total slavery nor total liberty’,6 would vary in its ratio of freedom to tyranny with each occupant of the throne.

  Augustus, probably Rome’s most successful emperor, charmed the Senate with generous amnesty and gentle persuasion, allowing it to retain the inner empire and its members to lead legions and govern provinces as before, while he controlled the high command and the outer territories, including the frontiers. The forces were overhauled and the Western world’s first standing army created, consisting of 150,000 legionary and a similar number of auxiliary soldiers. The concentration of power in one man, who controlled the military machine, as well as the permanence of that machine, would deter both internal and external challengers. Augustus’ reforms thus offered a genuine prospect of peace, though long habits of strife and the pursuit of glory would render Rome incapable of grasping it fully.

  The expression pax Romana, adopted from the elder Pliny, was used by that writer incidentally, in describing plants ‘now available to the botanist from all corners of the world, thanks to the boundless majesty of the Roman peace’.7 During the 1st century AD the principle of a universal peace will at times be honoured more in breach than observance, in the sense that most of Rome’s rulers reverted at least once to external ventures. But the pax Romana is not to be sneezed at. Despite notable exceptions, the empire and its battlefronts would soon fall quiet for almost two centuries. This was something new to the human condition. The temple of the double-faced Janus, traditionally open in time of war, had been closed only twice in the seven centuries between the city’s foundation and Augustus’ accession. Within the Barbaricum, where feuding and raiding were facts of life, a prolonged or widespread peace was similarly unknown. Given such unpromising precedents, the imposition and maintenance of the pax Romana was an extraordinary feat and perhaps mankind’s greatest achievement until that time.

  Augustus’ professional army of twenty-eight legions, assisted by some 300 auxiliary units, was now posted to the outer provinces where it would remain for three centuries and more. There the exterior nations, counting only those within reach of imperial territory, may have outnumbered Rome’s soldiers by ten to one: a guess which envisages a compact corps of full-timers facing the vast potential of a prehistoric world in which all were part-time warriors.

  Rome’s erratic expansion had left anomalies which Augustus resolved to correct. Spain’s north-west corner, the Alpine lands and much of the Balkans still lay outside the empire and would be dealt with in turn. A serious underrating of difficulties beyond the Rhine would then entice Augustus eastwards. Our second Episode recounts the disastrous outcome in Germany: the first, clear, large-scale failure of Roman imperial expansion. The shock of this rebuke led to the famous advice, contained in Augustus’ will, that the empire should not be expanded further. In deference to his stepfather’s wish, Tiberius turned to a foreign policy based on diplomacy, and with the exception of the British venture (described in Episode Three), the carrot would prevail till the end of the 1st century, when Trajan brought back the stick. Nevertheless, despite inconsistencies between one ruler and the next, Rome was gradually turning her back on adventurism: not only because of the absence of easy victims or dangerous enemies, but also because defence costs, coupled with economic stagnation, were reducing the means to attain more distant and difficult territorial goals.

  A corollary to the cessation of expansion would be an armed frontier, soon to evolve along the Rhine and Danube. It would continue to be strengthened throughout the period and be joined by others in the Near East and North Africa. This represented an exchange of the informal boundaries of the Republican period, held by treaty and supported by bribery or menace, for a precise line of exclusion guarded by Roman soldiers. The barbarians would be allowed through its checkpoints in time of peace and in numbers acceptable to the Roman authorities, providing entry was in daylight, unarmed and after payment of dues.8 Though
the army would continue to patrol the near Barbaricum, gathering intelligence, mediating in disputes and paying stipends to friendly chieftains, the frontier could now be sealed at a moment’s notice. However, that the mistress of the world should even consider hiding behind barriers suggests deep changes in attitude, whose origins are also described in Episode Two: a recognition of the size of the outside nations, an acceptance that the gulf between those inside and outside the empire was unlikely to be bridged and barbarian envy unlikely to be assuaged. Time confirms this pessimism. The centuries offer no example of a frontier’s dismantling because improved relations made it unnecessary; or of voluntary fusion between the empire and its neighbours brought about by the onset of goodwill.

  The First Episode sees the poet Ovid looking from the wall of a Black Sea outpost onto savage but skilful horsemen. This exemplifies the security problem of antiquity. On the one hand, a cultural gap and disparity of wealth between the classical and barbarian worlds too big to promise indefinite peace; on the other, advantages in military technique too small to guarantee a permanent Roman lead. Furthermore the pax Romana, with it laws against the bearing of arms, created a state whose civilian majority would forget how to fight.

  The situation described by Ovid will not be revived till the 16th–19th centuries, when the age of exploration takes Europeans across oceans and the Old and New Worlds collide. Most obviously, his vision of mounted archers circling the walls reminds one of Indians round a paleface stockade. But the comparison is unfavourable to Rome in two respects: the American settlers had firearms; and their support, in terms of numbers migrating from the motherlands, was almost limitless. Rome’s lacklustre technology would never put a decisive weapon into her soldiers’ hands; and population pressures would work not outwards against the barbarians but inwards against the empire.

  At present, however, Rome still disposed of muscle enough and her astuteness in co-opting other nations and diverting their energies to advantage has been mentioned. During the century covered by these episodes the last quarter of imperial territory will be acquired. It is only as the period ends that Hadrian dares flout Rome’s glorious traditions by making pacifism a plank of policy. With his successor, Antoninus, the empire reaches its floodtide of prosperity. Yet, by the end of the 2nd century, the best will be over. Military dictatorship, assassination, coup d’état, overtaxation and inflation mark the down-path. Rome’s sickness will be sensed by the outside peoples and as she neglects the art of unity they begin to cultivate it.

  However, the rebound of the barbarians and their eventual part in the formation of Europe are still centuries away. At the time of this study the peoples ranged in relative docility round the empire were, to the north, Celts, Germans and Sarmatians; to the east, various Iranian groups, most notably Parthians, plus the Arab tribes; and, in Africa, Hamitic natives of Ethiopian and Berber strains. First, however, it should be asked what Romans understood by ‘barbarian’. The actual term seems to have arisen from Greek mimicry of unfamiliar language, i.e. ‘bar-bar’, rather as we say ‘jabber-jabber’. The Latin barbatus (bearded) appears to describe a barbarian characteristic rather than to supply the expression. Though the name was applied to nations outside the classical orbit, not all the empire’s neighbours were considered barbarians. Apart from bedouin, the Near and Middle Eastern races were seldom so described. Literary usage suggests that ‘barbarian’ meant what it does today: the opposite to civilized; and that barbarians were seen as backward, wayward and dangerous. In practice, the barbarians with whom Rome had contact were largely European, though these extended indefinitely eastwards into northern Asia. In North Africa the surviving word ‘Berber’ implies that the interior tribes were also called by this name. However, these were fewer and further from mainstream events, as demonstrated by the guarding of North Africa (other than Egypt) by a single legion, in contrast to Europe’s fourteen.9 To concentrate on the three ethnic groups confronting the empire in Europe is to focus on the barbarians about whom most is known, whose importance for history is greatest and who offer the widest spectrum of development: from the creative Celts, on the verge of literacy, to the still nomadic Sarmatians, gruesome in their savagery.

  In Egypt the barbarian problem would easily be solved by barring the Nile at its first cataract, while the Eastern and Western Deserts largely looked after themselves. In the remainder of North Africa the barrier of the Sahara shielded the Roman provinces from invasion, though nomadism on its fringes was a source of nuisance, as it was along the Syrian and Arabian frontiers. In the East, however, stability hinged on a single factor: the longstanding rivalry between Rome and Parthia, each coveting the other’s nearer provinces but neither finding strength to hold them. Major conflict was in practice rare. Europe presented more complex problems, arising from fragmentation and the unsettled times. Here Rome faced a crazy paving of tribe beyond tribe, in which annexation of one simply brought her into contact with others. Continuing to advance offered conquest without conclusion; ceasing meant bribing unconquered tribes to keep the peace. It was the dilemma of power: to expand, overgrow and become unmanageable; or to halt and consolidate, but become the paymaster of covetous clans.

  In recent years historians have built another bridge between classical and Iron Age studies by reinterpreting Roman influence upon the Barbaricum in economic terms. Whether a creature buffeted by such fickle winds as prehistoric man – or indeed man in any period – is a reliable basis for ‘model’ construction, is doubtful. Nevertheless this theory deserves attention because it is compatible with archaeological facts. Some 100 or 150 miles east of the Rhine there begins a zone of chieftainly graves, containing prestigious goods of Roman origin. This continues for a further 200 miles into Central Germany. A similar zone is encountered on the barbarian side of the Danube. In pre-conquest Gaul archaeology traces a corresponding band of interments across Central France at a comparable distance from Roman Provence. In each instance there is the same gap of 100 or more miles between Roman territory and the start of the splendiferous burial belt.

  To explain these grave-goods, which often include objects associated with sumptuous wining and dining, there is another theory, known as ‘prestige goods dependency’. According to this, a tribal society can be made dependent upon a more advanced neighbour simply by supplying novel and luxurious goods to its chieftain. For his part the chieftain will corner the supply by ensuring that no such products enter his territory other than through him. In this way he makes himself the sole source of bounty and giver of spectacular gifts, feasts and carousals, and his influence will be greatly enhanced. The situation is echoed in modern monarchy’s monopoly in the bestowal of titles and decorations, except that in the barbarian case the rewards took the form of imports, which could be withheld by the outside supplier. Cessation of the flow could have dire consequences for a dependent chieftain.

  Returning to the cross-frontier model: this proposes three zones and accounts for the entire near Barbaricum, to a depth of about 500 miles. To take the example of the Rhine: the zone nearest the river (Western Germany) was that in which the Roman army could intervene directly to influence tribal politics. It was therefore unnecessary to create an addiction to prestige goods. In any case, it would hardly be feasible for a chief to monopolize trade in a region so close to the frontier and its markets. Here coin prevailed, if not between Germans then as a medium of trade with the Romans. Chieftains would be paid in it; both to keep the peace and permit traffic through their territories to and from the belt beyond. This was the second zone (Central Germany), classic location for the exercise of ‘prestige goods dependency’, being too far from the frontier for general access to its markets or for coinage to be useful. Supplies for this zone are likely to have moved in guarded consignment to chieftainly recipients. It is unclear what proportion was regular commercial traffic, for example wine, and what were diplomatic gifts, such as silver goblets and dinner services of finest craftmanship. No doubt there were both. What did Rom
e ask in return? The answer is, of course, the implementation of pro-Roman policies; but also, almost certainly, slaves. A third zone (Eastern Germany) is therefore postulated for procurement, where slaves were seized in raids or taken as prisoners of war.

  The model is buttressed by the frequency of coins in the western zone, lavish interments in the central zone and so-called warrior burials in the eastern zone, where grave-goods emphasize weaponry, suggesting a region of tension and strife. It is also consistent with the imperial economy. Because industrial development was limited and tradition forbade senators to engage in commerce, agriculture was the principal outlet for investment available to the Roman rich. This led to the formation of large estates, worked mainly by slaves. As peace became the 1st-century norm, the flow of prisoners of war to the slave market dwindled and the search for sources within the barbarian lands must inevitably have intensified.

  Based on a sustained flow of luxuries toward its centre and constant slave raiding along its edge, it need hardly be added that the model seems unstable. The movement of prestige goods could be interrupted owing to troubles within the empire. The procurement zone might seek a larger share of the middle zone’s benefits; or, depopulated by the constant activities of slavers, more distant tribes might be tempted to invade, leading to an implosion toward the frontier whose security the system was supposed to support.

  Little is gained by testing the model against written sources, which yield few details regarding cross-frontier transactions and tell us almost nothing of the deeper Barbaricum. The best information is from the 1st-century BC and earlier. The huge size of wine shipments is known from the case of a merchant arraigned for non-payment of export duty;10 while many a lost cargo tells underwater archaeology the same story. Diodorus of Sicily goes a step further in relating wine trade to slave trade: