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

by Derek Williams

  The findings could point to the following scenario, generally compatible with the written sources. In the autumn of AD 9 Varus was tricked into a westward march in the general direction of today’s Osnabrück in order to quell a fictitious disturbance, instead of the usual south-westward journey back to the Lippe. This took his column along a natural route, following the northern front of the foothills where they meet the plain. A trap was prepared at the narrowest part of this corridor where the army would be squeezed between upland and wetland by a convergence of tribes and German deserters.

  The surprise of these findings is their incompatibility with Dio, whose setting is decidedly forest: an army caught ‘in almost inextricable woods’, ‘unable to deploy the cavalry because of trees’, and so on. Tacitus (a century after the event but a century before Dio) is our sole source for the expression Teutoburgiensis saltus;137 and it is possible that the discrepancy originated from his peculiar use of saltus. It now seems unlikely that Tacitus intended it in its usual sense of ‘clearing in the forest’. Livy had employed the word quite differently in relation to Thermopylae: Thermopylarum saltum ubi angustae fauces coartant iter138 (the pass of Thermopylae, where a narrow gap constricts the road). Was Tacitus echoing this usage? Had propaganda sought to ennoble the Varian Disaster by choosing a loaded word, associated in historical writing with the Spartans’ defence at Thermopylae, an event of legendary heroism; and was Tacitus simply repeating what had become the standard description? In either case the parallel with doomed heroes and the topographic resemblances are clear, for both battles were fought in constricted terrain or natural gaps. In this event – and in view of the recent discoveries – a more correct reading of Tacitus might not be Teutoburg Forest but Teutoburg Corridor; meaning the sandy, east-west passage where the line of foothills met the North German Plain. By contrast Dio seems to have lighted on the meaning of saltus as a glade, leading to his enhancement of the forest aspect, adding to the theatricality of his account and helping to excuse defeat. His description led successively to mistranslation by the humanists, the renaming of the Osning Range as the Teutoburgerwald, the placing of Bandel’s statue in its midst (some forty-seven miles from the newly discovered site) and the misdirection of all battlefield theories southwards, into wooded hill country.

  By contrast, the recent findings point to a setting where sloping forest met open marshland, strongly reminiscent of the place where Caecina was ambushed by the remontant Armin, seven years after the Teutoburg battle. Why (if Tacitus is to be believed) did the German leader then cry out, ‘Behold, Varus and his legions, trapped in the same way!’? This too suggests a similarity of predicament and terrain. Velleius Paterculus, author of the only contemporary account, was seemingly accurate in describing Varus as ‘hemmed in by bog, bush and ambush’.

  Such is the strengthening evidence for locating the Varian Disaster in the Osnabrück rather than the Detmold vicinity; and indeed, Germany’s learned have already largely abandoned using the expression, ‘Battle of the Teutoburg Forest’, in favour of the less tendentious ‘Varus Battle’.

  The Varian Disaster, which cost Rome Germany, also cost Germany Rome; or at least the benefits of Mediterranean civilization. Both sides had much to learn from the encounter, but as the Germans returned to the forest it was not Roman ideas on urbanization, road-building, the peaceful arts or the rule of law that they took with them. Despite Quintilius Varus’ season on the bench, German enthusiasm for the practice and principles of Roman law was totally feigned. In fact absence of the appropriate loan words from Latin into German suggests a disinterest in theoretical or abstract concepts of any kind. Fascination was with Roman tactics and weaponry. In due course it would go further. As time passed the Germans would recognize that the empire’s secret lay in diplomacy and the ability to make common cause. These gifts they would one day mimic: not to the extent of achieving nationhood, but sufficiently to win wars. In this sense the exhortation to unity emblazoned on Armin’s sword at the Hermannsdenkmal was not many centuries from realization. Small wonder that a 4th-century Roman continues to call them ‘Germanos hostes truces et assiduos formidantes’ (the Germans, our ferocious and implacable foe).139

  EPISODE 3

  The Soldiers

  THE RECITAL SEEMED INTERMINABLE, ITS prolongation assured by an enraptured audience and Nero’s eagerness to bask in its rapture. Nor was there likelihood of escape from the cycle of applause and encore till the emperor tired; and being scarcely beyond his teens and endlessly hungry for adulation, that was unlikely to be soon. Of all places which appreciated artistry, recognition in Greece, the land of artists, was doubly sweet. So it was that, as Nero struck the lyre yet again, a pin could have been heard to drop; while he sang they sat spellbound; and when he stopped they exploded, with shouts of ‘Blessed are they that hear thee!’, ‘Apollo, thou art with us!’ and ‘Surely it is Phoebus himself who sings!’ And yet in truth the playing was plain, the voice thin, the theatricality forced and the whole occasion acutely embarrassing.

  Irksome as this was for the audience of Greek notables, it was doubly so for the emperor’s Italian entourage, who had no choice but to endure these unendurably boring exhibitions at each stop on the long itinerary. Performances had been known to last from early morning till late evening and some Greeks had hit on the idea of swooning with ecstasy, so they could be carried out as if dead: the only way of escape. For those in the imperial suite, on the other hand, endurance was perhaps a price worth paying for an otherwise pleasant and leisurely progress around the hospitable cities of Hellas, a country regarded by Romans with an affection similar to the Englishman’s view of Italy in the age of the Grand Tour. Besides, Greece flattered the emperor and moderated his moods, which made things easier as well as safer for his travelling companions. The catastrophe was for the host country, owing to the endless attainders and confiscations which Nero was currently devising to pay for his Corinth Canal project. It was said that the roads were busy with messengers carrying news of condemnations or confirmation of murders performed.1

  Among the Italians present on that fateful evening, quite distinct from the usual run of officials and hangers-on, was a senator, already in his forties, on whom the mantle of pretended pleasure sat uneasily. T. Flavius Vespasianus was not only a soldier among senators, he was even a rough diamond among soldiers, being of bourgeois rather than aristocratic background and rustic rather than metropolitan origin. Not that social handicaps mattered greatly. The awkwardness was in the man, here emphasized by the extreme contrast between caesar and soldier: Nero, last of the lines of Augustus and Livia, rouged, ringed and ringleted; and Vespasian, inelegant, gruff and practical. A portrait bust in Naples2 shows him as bald, with vestiges of coarse and crinkly hair, the features clenched and determined, the expression searching, the mouth stingy but redeemed by an ironic smile. Though the eyes are blank marble, the sculptor has contrived to suggest a twinkle. Homely in looks and rough of tongue, short on social graces and long on common sense: such was the man designated by a jest of fortune to be Nero’s successor.

  Why should the emperor invite so unlikely a companion on a fine arts tour of Greece? The answer can only have been that Nero liked him. He was also a national hero. When scarcely in his mid-twenties, he had done singularly well against the Britons. It seems Nero distrusted the commander of that campaign, Aulus Plautius, whose murder he would in due course arrange. Perhaps it was to spite Plautius that Nero now favoured his former lieutenant. Whatever the reason, Vespasian’s star was rising. He had come far since the ridicule to which he had been subjected as the youthful official in charge of the Roman street sweepers, when (if the expression may be excused) he had fallen foul of the then emperor: ‘Caligula, spotting a pile of mud in an alleyway, ordered it to be thrown onto Vespasian’s toga; he being at that time the official responsible for street cleaning.’3 Vespasian was obliged to offer up his white toga, with its senator’s broad purple stripe, much as a girl might hold her apron in gatheri
ng flowers, while guardsmen trowelled the ordure, doubtless with full measure of donkey droppings, into his lap. Suetonius enjoys the irony: ‘Accordingly the soldiers shovelled the dirt into a fold of his senatorial gown, filling it to capacity. This was later seen as an omen, that Vespasian would one day take the soil of Italy into his care.’4

  Under Claudius had come a brighter turn. A contact in high places brought command of a legion. It was a job that would fit like a glove. ‘Vespasian was a born soldier: marching at the head of his men,5 choosing where they should camp,6 harrying the enemy day and night by his leadership and where necessary by personal combat; content with whatever was going in the way of food and dressing much like a private soldier.7’

  His reward for a brilliantly fought campaign in Britain was the governorship of Africa. Straight as a die, he declined all bribes and in consequence was ruined by the grievous expense of this post. ‘He governed Africa with great justice – and with dignity – save once when the people of Hadrumentum8 pelted him with turnips. That he came back no richer than he went out is proven by his having to mortgage the family land and invest in the mule-breeding business, from which he got the nickname “muleteer”.’9

  After Claudius came Nero and a return to better days. Perhaps the boyish caesar found Vespasian’s directness and jocularity refreshing. At any rate, it was highly unlikely that a ‘muleteer’ would ever grow too big for his boots. So Vespasian’s reward, both for his achievement and his modesty, was the honour of accompanying the emperor on this pleasantest of tours, plus a front seat at a long succession of imperial lyre recitals. We may assume that he was sitting near the front since Nero, in mid song, now spotted something which came close to costing Vespasian his life: Vespasian had fallen asleep!

  How could a man of such sense allow himself so dangerous a lapse? We must suppose that disinclination toward the artistic, distaste for the pseudo-artistic, the excruciating tedium of the occasion, combined with the balminess of the evening, allowed his attention to wander further than usual, so that reverie slid into sleep, causing his head to nod under circumstances which, had he been less popular, would certainly have cost him it. We next hear of him dismissed from court, fleeing Greece and hiding in the Italian countryside; self-exiled to a life of total and indefinite obscurity. However, before pursuing this strange story, it may be rewarding to look back at those events in Britain which had brought Vespasian to prominence, indeed to consider that remote island generally.

  Augustus’ advice to his successors, not to expand the empire further, had stood for almost thirty years until Claudius repudiated it by the British invasion of AD 43. This was a misguided enterprise, the decision to embark upon it taken against the weight of evidence. Certainly Rome’s northern frontier could hardly have been more clearly defined or better protected than by the Channel. ‘What wall’, Josephus asks, ‘could be stronger than the sea which is Britain’s bulwark?’10 Equally it was Rome’s. This Augustus recognized; and though he called himself Caesar’s heir, he had rejected the option of invasion:

  Though Rome could have taken Britain she declined to do so. In the first place the Britons are no threat, having insufficient strength to cross over and attack us. In the second, there would be little to gain. It seems that we presently get more out of them in duty on their exports than we would by direct taxation, especially if the costs of an occupation army and of tax collecting be discounted. The same goes even more for the islands round about Britain.11

  For Claudius the temptation of Britain lay not in strategic or fiscal advantage but in newsworthiness and the stir which would be created by extending the empire across ‘outer ocean’, seen by Romans as a symbolic barrier. But though Britain possessed the potential for a quick propaganda coup, it was less easy to predict events in the long term, to foresee that the problem would not be crossing perilous water or landing on a hostile shore, but deciding how far to go and where to stop. This search for a stopping place would be long and vexatious, with no comfort in the knowledge that the Channel had been best in the first place. It would, alas, be characteristic of policy toward this island that practical arguments were overruled by emotional. Fame awaited the conqueror of Britannia. Conversely, infamy awaited whoever might relinquish her. So, once started, the line of action would be difficult to retract. Indeed, within ten years Nero was already wishing he could ditch the enterprise but found it politically prudent to stay, since ‘not to do so would have belittled the glory won by Claudius’.12

  Glory was what Claudius most needed. Claudius the family fool; the coward who, during the desperate hours following Caligula’s assassination, had been found cringing behind a curtain in the palace. Claudius the insecure, who had bribed his way to the throne with payments of 3,750 denarii to each Praetorian guardsman, equivalent to sixteen years’ pay for a legionary private. Now he would show them. Subjugation of the ‘Celtic world’ had taken centuries and was still incomplete. Claudius would strike the culminating blow.

  Ninety-seven years earlier Caesar had charted a comparable course. He too had recognized Britain’s power to stir the imagination. His visits may be connected with sensation-seeking and rivalry with Pompey, rather than with practical benefit. In the military sense they were reckless in the extreme. Gaul was not yet fully subdued and he had no business leaving her in his rear. But as the lion-tamer crowns his act by turning his back upon the lions, so it was Caesar’s pièce de résistance to leave the Gauls lightly guarded while turning with seeming nonchalance to the Britons.

  In 55 BC Caesar had set sail with the bulk of his force in order to test the problems of crossing and the British reaction, anticipating a more ambitious operation in the summer following. He landed in East Kent, traditionally on the shingle at Walmer or, if his estimate of seven miles beyond the end of the cliffs is taken strictly, at Deal.

  They embarked around midnight and Caesar, with the leading ships, reached the British Coast at about nine the following morning. He could see the enemy armed and in large numbers on all the hills. Hereabouts are steep cliffs, so close to the sea that missiles may be thrown from cliff top to beach. This seemed no place to land, so they pressed on for about seven miles to where the ships could be beached on a level and open shore.13

  The sensation created by Caesar’s despatches, as well as the Roman view of the hazards of crossing, may be guessed from the Senate’s vote of a twenty-day thanksgiving on the army’s safe return.

  On his second visit Caesar crossed by the same route. His army forded a river, doubtless the Stour, and took a hillfort, probably Bigbury near Canterbury. They then marched west, perhaps along the North Downs, and swung north to wade neck-deep across the Thames in the vicinity of future London, despite sharpened stakes hidden below the water’s surface. From here they penetrated the forest14 ringing north London, of which Epping is a remnant. After defeating a tribal confederation, said to have included 4,000 war chariots, they stormed and occupied the stronghold of Cassivelaunus, the British leader and paramount chief of south-eastern England,15 probably at Wheathampstead, north of present-day St Albans. But Caesar was soon obliged to retire to the coast, where his base camp was under attack; finally re-embarking before the autumn gales jeopardized safe passage.

  This profitless adventure instigated a deception which could not fail to influence those who followed. It inferred that by seizing a major oppidum in tamest Hertfordshire the keys to Britain had somehow been secured. Geography seems to vindicate this view. Britain smiles toward the Continent, concealing troubles which will be revealed only gradually. In terms of terrain, climate and fertility, barely a third of the island lives up to its promise. What appears from the south to be an extension of France would, if seen from the north, be more like an extension of Norway. Even so, we must not leave the impression that antiquity was entirely ignorant of Britain’s physical and human geography. Evidence existed, some of it from Caesar’s own pen, on which a more realistic assessment might have been based.

  In the passag
e following, Caesar refers to the ‘coastal’ and the ‘interior’ regions. By the former he meant the south-east, whose areas of recent Belgic settlement included Kent, the counties north of London and the Sussex coast. Here the wealthiest tribes lived. By the ‘interior’ he especially meant upland Britain; in modern terms the North, Scotland, Wales and the South-West. He contrasts the two ways of life, considering the interior peoples to be less advanced. Caesar also thought Britain’s axis lay north-west-south-east instead of north-south, so that the west coast faced toward Spain and the east coast in a more northerly direction.

  The coastal regions are inhabited by Belgic invaders who came for plunder and stayed. The Belgians are numerous, with many cattle and farms, similar to those in Gaul. Like Gaul, too, there is ample timber, though without beech and fir. The climate is more temperate, with winter’s less severe than Gaul.