Eager for Glory
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4. Altar to Roma et Augustus, Lugdunum. (Reconstruction by the author based on numismatic and archaeological evidence)
5. Augustus’ Mausoleum, Rome. (Reconstruction by the author after G. Gatti and H. von Hesburg)
6. Drusus’ Arch, Rome. (Reconstruction by the author based on coin evidence)
7. Drusus’ Cenotaph in Mainz, Germany. (Reconstruction by the author after H.G. Frenz)
8. ‘Der Aichelstein’ by Matthäus Merian der Ältere in Topographia Archiepiscopatuum Moguntinensis, Trevirensis et Coloniensis, 1646. (Wikimedia Commons)
9. ‘Monumentum Drusi’ in Johann Friedrich Franz Lehne’s Comparaison du plan de l’ancien Mogontiacum avec la situation actuelle de la ville de Mayence of 1809, published 1836–1839. (Wikimedia Commons)
10. Nero Claudius Drusus as envisaged by Dr August Benedict Wilhelm in Die Feldzüge des Nero Claudius Drusus in nördlichen Deutschland, May 1826.
Maps and Plans
List of Maps and Plans
Map of the Roman Empire 17–9 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
Route and elevation profile of via Claudia Augusta. (Drawn by the author)
Map of military operations in Raetia and Noricum 15 BCE. (© Lindsay Powell)
Map of Colonia Copia Felix Munatia Lugdunum.
Map of the world according the M. Vipsanius Agrippa.
Map of military operations in Magna Germania 12 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
Map of military operations in Magna Germania 11 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
Ground plan of Oberaden Roman Fortress, 11 BCE–9 CE.
Map of military operations in Magna Germania 10 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
Ground plan of the federal sanctuary at Lugdunum. (Drawn by the author after A. Audin)
Map of military operations in Magna Germania 9 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
Map of Mogontiacum 1st century BCE–5th century CE.
1. Map of the Roman Empire 16–9 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
2. Route and elevation profile of via Claudia Augusta throug the Alps. (Drawn by the author)
3. Map of military operations in Raetia and Noricum 15 BCE. (© Lindsay Powell)
4. Map of Colonia Copia Felix Munatia Lugdunum.
5. Orbis Terrarum, the map of the world according the M. Vipsanius Agrippa.
6. Map of military operations in Magna Germania 12 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
7. Map of military operations in Magna Germania 11 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
8. Ground plan of Oberaden Roman Fortress, 11 BCE–9 CE.
9. Map of military operations in Magna Germania 10 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
10. Ground plan of the federal sanctuary at Lugdunum. (Drawn by the author after A. Audin)
11. Map of military operations in Magna Germania 9 BCE. (© Carlos de la Rocha)
12. Map of Mogontiacum 1st century BCE–5th century CE.
Roman Names
M. Caelius T. f. Lemonia Bononia
This is the official name of a centurion of legio XVIII preserved on an inscription now in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany (CIL XIII 8648; AE 1952). His name embodies the elements of Roman naming practice. It translates as ‘Marcus Caelius, son of Titus, of the voting tribe of Lemonia, from Bononia’. Marcus is his forename (praenomen) by which his family and close friends called him. In inscriptions, public records and narrative texts, it was abbreviated. The standard abbreviations for common praenomina were:
A. Aulus
Ap. Appius
C. or G. Caius or Gaius
Cn. or Gn. Cnaeus or Gnaeus
D. Decimus
L. Lucius
M. Marcus
Mam. Mamius
M’. Manius
P Publius
Q Quintus
Ser Servius
Sex Sextus
Sp. Spurius
T. Titus
Ti. Tiberius
Caelius is his clan or family name (nomen genticulum). Many of these clans such as the Claudia and Cornelia were famous old families of Rome with proud traditions. Then follows the filiation or patronymic of the father’s praenomen, whose full name would have been Titus Caelius. As a Roman citizen his family was associated with one of 35 voting tribes: in elections Caelius voted with the Lemonian tribe. The final element is the place of his birth (origo) or domicile (domus), which is in this case Bononia, modern Bologna in Italy. Together these distinguished this particular Marcus Caelius from another bearing the same name. To clearly tell men apart with the same name, with their warped sense of humour, Romans often adopted a third nickname (cognomen) such as Rufus ‘red haired’, Paulus ‘shorty’ or Brutus ‘stupid’. A man who had achieved a great victory in battle might be granted use of an honorific title (agnomen) such as Africanus ‘the African’ or Britannicus ‘the Briton’ indicating the theatre of war in which it was won.
Preface
Behind many street names there is a story. One such is Drususgasse, which means ‘Drusus Alley’. This otherwise rather ordinary quiet treelined street in Cologne, Germany, between Kolpingplatz and An der Rechtschule, is a short walk from the great Kölner Dom, the city’s gothic cathedral, and the Römisch-Germanisches Museum, which houses an astonishing collection of Roman artifacts recovered from the ground below the modern city. The curious fact is that this side street is named after this particular Roman. Cologne is not unique. His name is also preserved in several other Drususstraßen in towns and cities across modern Germany. So who is this Drusus? The man in question is Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus, known to history as Drusus the Elder.
The name Drusus the Elder conjures up the image of a man in his sixties or seventies, with thinning grey hair, an aquiline nose and battle scars borne of years of hard campaigning. He was certainly a military man, and he started young. When he was ordered by his stepfather Augustus to take up arms and command an army he was just 23 years old. Over the next year, aided by his brother (and the future Emperor) Tiberius, he subjugated the people living in the mountain valleys of the central-eastern Alps. He was a builder too and oversaw the largest construction of military infrastructure of the time – and in the process he founded many of the places that are today the great cities along the River Rhine. He was a seafaring explorer who took his fellow countrymen further north than any Roman had gone before. He was also a diplomat and made treaty allies of many of the tribes across the Rhine from the northwestern shore of Europe to the Elbe River – and in so doing shaped the destiny of Europe. He was the husband to one of the most beautiful women of his day, Antonia, the daughter of M. Antonius. He was a family man too and fathered the golden boy Germanicus, the feisty Livia Iulia and the remarkable Claudius who would become emperor – among the better fruit borne of this knotty branch of the Julio-Claudian family tree. Yet when he died he was just 29 years old – not a grey haired old man, but a dashing, popular and handsome twenty-something in the prime years of his life.
For many Romans he was a hero, their equivalent of Alexander the Great. Monuments and statues were erected to honour him. Augustus wrote a biography of him. The Emperor Claudius idolised him and minted coins with his profile showing him as the eternally youthful ‘conqueror of Germania’. The prolific Pliny the Elder also wrote an extensive account of Drusus’ military exploits in the lands north of the Rhine. Yet today he is hardly known.
How could a man who was regarded as an important figure to the Romans so completely slip out of the popular memory? How and why did Augustus delegate to an inexperienced man in his mid-twenties a centerpiece of his imperial plan? How did someone so young undertake such a risky mission – and did he succeed? And what remains of his legacy today? As I went in search of answers to these questions, I was astonished to find that there was no single volume account of the life of Nero Claudius Drusus. There are books on his stepfather Augustus, his mother Livia Drusilla, his brother Tiberius, his stepsister Julia and his son Claudius, even his grandchildren Gaius (Caligula) and Agrippina, but no one
had described the life of Drusus. He is in the history books but all too often as a bit player in Augustus’ grand imperial ambitions, or worse, a passing figure on the road to the disaster at Teutoburg Forest. Tellers of history can often be myopic focusing on a few individuals when the wider context reveals others to have contributed greatly and whose achievements are just as worthy of being reported. Drusus the Elder has for too long been consigned to obscurity. Eager for Glory restores the name and reputation of the young Roman hero for a new generation. This is the book on Drusus the Elder I had hoped to find.
Like so many personalities from the Ancient World, Drusus is a shadowy figure. The biography that Augustus wrote is entirely lost to us – more is the pity because it was certainly a memoir and would have uniquely recounted moments the affectionate stepfather shared with his stepson. Pliny the Elder’s history is also wholly lost. He had served three tours of duty in at least two of the regions entered by Drusus and he may have had access to original documents and sites and even heard tales from sons of old soldiers who served with him. What we have is a jigsaw puzzle of fragments written by mostly later historians. Events in Drusus’ life are described by Cassius Dio, Florus, Horace, Livy, Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, Velleius Paterculus and others borrowing from earlier accounts. Fortunately enough information survives that a reasonably accurate timeline can be reconstructed and a good deal about the nature and personality of the man can be deduced.
This book is a journey in which we follow the footsteps of the young prince as he grows up. As a relative of Augustus he had a privileged life, but it was very far from an idle one. Drusus’ life was shaped by politics and by war. He became part of the apparatus of the state earlier than most thanks to his stepfather, but he scaled the highest heights of the political power structure only after he had demonstrated competence in government and military service. As a soldier, his life was inextricably tied up with wars of conquest – first in and around the Alps, and later in the lands north of the Rhine, which the Romans called Magna Germania (which we today call Germany and The Netherlands) and was largely unknown to them. Thus, Drusus’ conquest of Germania is also an adventure story. The Romans’ early knowledge of the lands and peoples of Germania was as much uninformed by stereotype and prejudice as it was informed by poor military intelligence and imprecise cartography. Many of the troops heading into what was for them unchartered territory must have been terrified, expecting to encounter men no better than brute savages living in dank swamps and dark forests, and fearsome monsters straight out of legends they had heard as boys.
Drusus’ military expedition is remarkable for the fact that he led his men into unexplored territory by sea and on land without the aid of devices any modern army commander would expect to have at his disposal – good maps, radio communications, and air reconnaissance. Like Alexander and Iulius Caesar before him, he relied on ground intelligence from allies and captives, updated by reports from scouts, and a soldier’s instinct for terrain and learning the habits of his enemy. Communications in Drusus’ time were the best of the day but nevertheless remarkably poor by modern standards. The Romans’ genius was recognising the fact and delegating decision-making authority. A commander could not wait for orders from higher up: he had to make decisions on the spot. In this respect, Drusus was a commander soldiers looked up to and were inspired by. He led his men from the front with astonishing acts of derring-do. Yet this boldness also verged on the reckless and on more than one occasion he put not only himself but his men at unnecessary risk.
Eager for Glory is structured to follow the life of Drusus chronologically and to draw out key themes that shaped it:
Chapter 1: Drusus the Youth, covering the years 38–18 BCE, describes the question of his paternity, relationships with his mother, brother and Augustus; the pressures of living up to the formidable reputation of the gens Claudia; his early career in public office; and his marriage to Antonia Minor. His life is set against the background of civil war, the rivalry of Augustus and Marcus Antonius and the rise of the imperial family.
Chapter 2: Drusus the Soldier, covering the years 17–15 BCE, describes Drusus’ first military command during the Raetian and Norican Wars. Augustus’ imperial strategy in the north, the structure and deployment of the Roman army, as well as the arms and equipment of both Roman and Celtic opponents, are explained.
Chapter 3: Drusus the Builder, covering the years 14–13 BCE, describes his life as a young father and how Drusus approached his governorship of Tres Galliae. During this period he oversaw the massive infrastructure build-out along the Rhine – including a canal – as well as use of the Batavi as allies, in preparation for the German Wars.
Chapter 4: Drusus the Explorer, covering the year 12 BCE, describes how Drusus discovered and defused a rebellion in Tres Galliae and launched the German War with an amphibious expedition and land campaign into what was then uncharted territory. The use of a diplomatic strategy executed through treaties with new allies, particularly the Chauci and Frisii, and use of client states, is explained.
Chapter 5: Drusus the Commander, covering the years 11–10 BCE, describes how Drusus’ eagerness for glory drove his men to near catastrophe at the Battle of Arbalo. The Germanic tribes, their warriors and their fighting techniques are described, in particular the Chatti, Cherusci and Sugambri.
Chapter 6: Drusus the Consul, in which he reaches the highest office of the political career ladder in 9 BCE, but returns to the front to continue the war. The march to the Elbe River and events leading to, and immediately following, his death are detailed.
Chapter 7: Drusus the Hero describes the cortège’s journey from Germania to Rome and the funeral in the city. How Augustus and his successors created and exploited the legend of Drusus as a rôle model and as ‘Conqueror of Germania’ for their own ends is examined.
The book ends with an assessment of the man and what remains of his legacy today. Finally, for the reader who is inspired to retrace the campaigns of Drusus the Elder – it would certainly make for a wonderful series of vacation trips – I have included a gazetteer of places and museums.
In respect of dates, I have used the convention ‘BCE’ (Before the Common Era) instead of BC, and ‘CE’ (Common Era) for AD. The events in Drusus’ life described in this book occur in the BCE epoch.
Romans generally had two names, a personal name (praenomen) and a family or clan name (nomen genticulum), but from the later days of the Republic, it was becoming common to have three by adding a nickname (cognomen). Victorious commanders in battle might also be granted a honorific title (agnomen). Modern historians usually call Romans by their cognomina or agnomina, the last of the three or more names, hence Caesar for G. Iulius Caesar, or Augustus for G. Iulius Caesar Augustus. (I have used Iulius for Julius throughout.) In some cases the Latin name has mutated into an Anglicism, such as Livy for Livius or Pliny for Plinius. For the names of ancient historians, I use the modern form, but for the protagonists in the story I retain the Latin form, hence M. Antonius rather than Mark Antony, and the orginal Greek form Kleopatra for Cleopatra.
This is a good place to point out that the ‘Elder’ in Drusus’ name is actually another way of saying ‘senior’, to distinguish him from the other Drusus (Drusus the Younger), who was his nephew – Tiberius named his son after his illustrious brother in his honour. To distinguish between the two, historians also refer to Drusus the Elder as Drusus I, Drusus Maior, Drusus Senior, Nero Drusus, Claudius Drusus and Drusus Germanicus. To complicate matters, Drusus the Elder’s oldest son bore the same name as his father, but thankfully he is usually referred to as just Germanicus. The reader will be forgiven for thinking that studying the house of Augustus can quickly become very confusing.
Where a place has a Latin name I prefer to use it since the modern name creates a false impression of the scale and feel of the ancient place, hence Oppidum Ubiorum rather than Cologne, which at this time more likely looked like a town of the American Wild West. The exceptions are
Athens and Rome, because to use Athenae and Roma would be unnecessarily pedantic; and places for which the ancient name is not known, in which case I use the modern name unless there is a well-known Anglicism. I have listed ancient and modern place names on pages 156–158 for convenience.
The names and places used by the indigenous, so-called Germanic, peoples who sided with or fought against the Romans are only known to us through Greek and Latin writings. A few tribal chieftains and kings are known but only by Romanised names. We do not know what Maelo of the Sugambri nation was called in his own language, or Marboduus of the Marcomanni. Few Germanic place names survive, though intriguingly the geographer Ptolemy lists several and even offers map co-ordinates for them. While attempts have been made to identify their precise locations, they are at best tentative.
The Latin version is used for Roman officer ranks, arms, equipment and battle formations throughout the text since there is often no modern equivalent. Definitions of the terms are listed in the Glossary.
The job of a biographer is to present as accurate and unbiased an account of his subject’s life as possible, but also to make the story compelling reading. Establishing the facts through research is an intellectually fun-filled journey but in the end the writing itself is a lonely endeavour with the inner voice the constant and sternest critic. May you, dear reader, find my telling of his story compelling.
To the shades of Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus Imperator I present this book: I hope it meets your expectations. Votum sovit libens merito.