Eager for Glory

by Philip Lindsay Powell

  Augustus was so concerned by the news that he began making the arrangements to take command of the situation in person even this late in the season.10Level heads prevailed and he was persuaded – perhaps by Agrippa or Livia – to delay the trip until the following year.11In the intervening months the military emergency passed. Lollius had successfully prepared a counter offensive.12When the news that Augustus was planning a military punitive counter response reached the Germanic tribes, their alliance retreated across the Rhine and sued for peace, even handing over hostages to the Romans as evidence of their good faith.13The crisis was over, the status quo restored – at least until the Germans were tempted to cross the river again. However, Augustus determined to take control of the situation. The events of that late summer of 17 BCE triggered the biggest review of northern frontier policy since Caesar invaded Gaul more than four decades earlier.

  Before Augustus could leave Rome in the spring of 16 BCE, he had important civic duties to perform. He inaugurated a renovated Temple of Quirinus and also gave gladiatorial games (ludi), which were public events intended primarily as blood-sacrifice offerings to the gods and secondarily as entertainment for the people.14Augustus first had to ask the permission of the Senate and, when granted, the task of organizing them fell to Tiberius and Drusus.15Organising the games was a major undertaking involving planning a programme of events and ceremonies, managing a budget, contracting with owners of gladiator troupes (familiae) and distributing tickets (tesserae). The games had become a big business and politically minded magistrates could exploit them for votes. In 22 BCE, Augustus transferred responsibility for organising the offical ludi from the aediles to the praetors, placing a strict cap on public spending and a limit of 120 gladiators, unless permission was granted for more by the senate.16As Drusus was still a quaestor he probably acted as a junior assistant to his brother who had been made praetor earlier that year. There were several games in the Roman calender and they were becoming increasingly lavish spectacles (spectacula). The previous year, the first of the once-in-a lifetime ludi Saeculares had been inauguarated on 31 May to mark the beginning of a new epoch of peace, prosperity and happiness.17Intended to be one of the definitive events and enduring legends of Augustus’ principate, the Secular Games lasted several days, consisting of formal ceremonies and sacrifices and a week of entertainments, including nighttime events by torchlight and a public concert of Horace’s specially commissioned Carmen Saeculare.18In comparison, the games supervised by Drusus and Tiberius were a much more modest affair. Nevertheless the goal was to put on the best show the available money could buy and the trick for each sponsor was to produce a more spectacular event than the last, just as cities hosting the Olympic Games do today. Hard nosed negotiating, calling in favours and appealing to corporate citizenship all played a part.

  There were several venues in the city to hold the ludi. Great temporary stands were erected for the spectators in the Forum Boarium, Rome’s ancient cattlemarket, or along the length of the rectangular space of the Forum Romanum. There was also the larger Circus Maximus, usually used for chariot races, which could be used to host more bloodthirsty entertainments. The hemicycle-shaped theatres of Gn. Pompeius Magnus and Marcellus may also have been used to stage games, but Rome’s first true purpose-built amphitheatre was erected by T. Statilius Taurus only as late as 29 or 27 BCE and at the time was considered a great innovation.19Other than the Circus Maximus seating at most venues was severely limited, however – one estimate is for just 3,300 seats in the stands erected in the Forum Romanum.20This sometimes led to tardy senators arriving to find all seats had been taken. During the same period Statilius Taurus opened his new amphitheatre.21Sometime between 26 and 17 BCE Augustus introduced the lex Iulia theatralis, which ensured that senators and equestrians always had seats reserved for them in the front fourteen rows.22The lower orders probably received their tickets from their patrons so the distribution of tesserae – the coin-like disks or tokens that permitted entry to the events – was a means to reward political favours and curry others. Anyone with a spare tessera instantly became everyone else’s best friend.

  The ludi were anticipated with great excitment. During the days preceding the ludi, members of the political priesthood (Quindecemviri Sacris Faciundis) provided sulphur, tar and torches for the people to carry out private purification rites.23The day of the games combined the pomp and ceremony of religious rites with glitz and glamour of a rockstar concert. As presiding magistrates, Drusus and Tiberius took their seats in the place of honour in the sponsor’s box. The programme might have included sacrifices of sheep and goats, executions of criminals, beast hunts and fights between pairs of gladiators. The Romans were fascinated by the novelty and variety of combat techniques of their subject peoples and pitched differently armed gladiators against each other. Men equipped as Samnites with pectoral plate armour, greaves, a spear and large round shield might duel with a Gaul (gallus) armed with chain mail body armour, large flat shield and spear.24The secutor with his brimless helmet and face guard with just two eye-holes, armed with a short sword (gladius) and a large army-style shield (scutum) was frequently pitted against the Thracian (thraex) equipped with a heavy helmet having many eye holes but a large crest and arm guard (manica), wielding a curved sword and carrying a small curved rectangular shield. The ‘Netman’ (retiarius) who fought with fishing net (rete) and trident often faced a heavily armed ‘Fishman’ (murmillo) carrying a sword and shield, but whose brimmed helmet with face guard restricted his view and disadvantaged its wearer by a prominent crest which could be snared by the opponent’s net. Alternatively, the secutor with a brimless helmet and small buckler and just two eye holes might fight the retiarius. The gladiators fought until one man fell or raised his hand for clemency. The referee (lanista) appealed to the sponsor for a decision who generally looked to the spectators for guidance. One estimate is that a gladiator had a 9:1 chance of surviving a bout, though if he lost this fell to 4:1.25Nevertheless, men did die on the sand of the arena, most being under 25 years of age. At just 22, Drusus had already been exposed to the gory spectacle of death in combat and the spilling of blood of men his own age.

  Restless Borderlands

  Leaving the affairs of the city and Italia in the hands of Statilius Taurus as city caretaker-in-chief (praefectus urbi) Augustus now departed with Tiberius for what would be a three-year long sojourn in the Gallic and Hispanic provinces.26Livia may have travelled with them.27The trail of evidence concerning Drusus’ whereabouts, however, wears thin at this point. Most likely, the newly minted young husband stayed in Rome. Dio comments that a decree had been issued which granted Drusus the power to perform the duties of a praetor.28A praetor’s day job involved judicial work in the city and was a position of responsibility. This was a high honour indeed as he was only twenty-two years old whereas the position of praetor was only normally available to men of thirty or older.29Being a member of the princeps’ family evidently had its privileges. In this scenario, with his stepfather, mother and brother away, it was perhaps the first time in Drusus’ young life that he had not been in his parent’s company. He and his new wife may, however, have accompanied the entourage, though there is no evidence to confirm one or other possibility.

  Augustus’ departure coincided with the circulation of several disturbing reports of supernatural activities. The Romans were by nature superstitious and sensitive to unusual natural events and accepted the paranormal as fact. The day after Augustus left Rome the temple of Iuventus burned to the ground; people were killed when a wolf ran along the via Sacra into the Forum Romanum; ants swarmed; and most ominously, all night long from the south to the north a flame like a firebrand burned in the sky.30It seemed the trip might in some way be cursed. The priests were consulted and prayers recited for the princeps’ safe return. Yet it was regarded by man as an inauspicious start to such a great venture.

  The journey took several weeks by road. On it he was accompanied by men of the Praetorian Cohort
s and his faithful bodyguard comprising entirely of Germanic mercenaries.31Arriving under cover of darkness – since he disliked the fuss of ceremony that came with daytime arrivals – Augustus installed himself in the provincial capital at Lugdunum (Lyon).32He was no stranger to the region having made trips there in 39 BCE and again in 27 BCE. Augustus had left Rome to address several problems “in the Galliae, Hispaniae and Germaniae”.33In the Hispaniae, the war of 29–19 BCE against the Astures and Cantabri had been won by Agrippa and had been over for three years but there remained a massive Roman military presence there.34The decade-long war in the north of the country had sapped the population, and consumed vast amounts of blood and treasure, but the region still required constant monitoring to avoid another outbreak. For the time being, it was under Roman control. In the Galliae the situation appears to have been stable but tense following the events of the Lollian Disaster. Nevertheless, the raid led by Maelo of the Sugambri and his allies over the River Rhine (Rhenus) had highlighted both to the population and to Augustus the vulnerability of the Gallic provinces. Augustus must have come to a realisation that there could not be peace and stability in the region while foreigners could enter, cause havoc and leave at will. Moreover, the terror of the invasion of the Cimbri from what is now Denmark and the Teutones from northern Germany who had swept down to the Italian Alps the previous century was still etched into the collective Roman memory.35A more enduring solution to ensure the security of Roman assets was needed.

  Augustus was a careful planner. He often quoted the Greek maxim that war should only be fought when what could be won in victory always outweighed what could be lost in defeat.36“For”, he said,

  men who pursue small advantages with no small hazard, resemble those who fish with a golden hook, the loss of which, if the line should happen to break, could never be compensated by all the fish they might take.37

  The Roman frontier was not a defensible line demarcated by any firm military barrier. The River Rhine formed a convenient natural frontier but, as the Sugambri and Tencteri had proved in 17 BCE and earlier in 55 BCE, it was permeable to those determined to cross it.38Invaders could then travel far inland until they were intercepted by Roman forces. Rome’s border was a soft frontier, where local populations co-existed, using streams and natural landmarks to define their territories. Moreover, these boundaries were not permanent. They were “frontier zones, rather than lines”, some of which overlapped.39Migrations of peoples, such as the Helvetii in 58 BCE, constantly changed the boundaries.40The frontier was only as permanent as Rome’s ability to enforce it and in practice there were simply not enough available troops to police the nominal boundary that divided Roman from non-Roman (peregrinus) in the Gallic provinces. The logical move was to place a large army along the Rhine to intercept any future incursions by Germanic marauders, and routinely patrol it with river craft. In what seems to be an attempt at a fresh start, Augustus replaced M. Lollius appointing Tiberius to be his provincial governor (legatus augusti pro praetore).41Among his many tasks, Tiberius, who had served in the war against the Astures and Cantabri, would supervise the relocation of legions from the Iberian peninsula to Gaul.

  The security of Gaul did not exist in isolation. It was only one piece of a larger problem. Studying the maps available to him, Augustus would have seen an obvious gap in the land frontier of Roman territory in the north (map 1). The Romans did not yet control the Rhine for its entire length. Additionally the wide strip of land between the Alpine Passes of northern Italy and the banks of the River Danube (Danuvius, Ister) extending eastwards as far as the shores of the Black Sea (Mare Euxinus) was also outside Roman control. To move men and matériel, Roman armies had to march through northern Italia then take the coast road to Provincia and head north or run the gauntlet over the Alps. The solution arrived at was to annexe the entire sweep of Alpine lands and the lowlands down to the Rhine and Danube rivers. This became the immediate strategic imperative, the necessary prerequisite before embarking on a longer-range campaign to address the problem of Germania Magna. That would mean subjugating at least forty-six tribal nations across some of the most difficult terrain in Europe.42

  Roman historians dismissed the notion that Augustus invaded his neighbours without just cause (sine iustis causis), or sought to expand the empire out of personal ambition or lust for glory.43Yet that does not fully square with the facts. True, the Romans had engaged in wars of ‘defensive aggression’, coming to the aid of their treaty allies when called upon to use military force, but it is a fact that they waged war every spring during the early fourth to the middle of the first century BCE, except in the most unusual of circumstances.44The senate was not averse to annexing territory when it made sense to do so from the perspective of practicality and profitability.45Declaring war was a serious business, however, and accompanied by due legal and religious process. From the earliest days a priesthood of fetiales advised the senate on foreign policy matters, took care of treaties, and acted as travelling ambassadors and heralds of peace or war.46Before invoking war with their Latin and Italian neighbours they made a direct appeal to the gods to support the Roman cause for it was they who would decide the side worthy of victory.47The fetiales even carried a magical spear (a fire-hardened or iron-tipped wooden stake) that after the proper incantations had been recited, would be hurled into the enemy’s territory.48By the time of Augustus the Romans had a less religious sensitivity to warmaking, but, nevertheless, the niceties of religious ritual were still observed. The empire’s enemies might now be far away but distance posed no obstacle and there was even a conveniently located plot of land in the city of Rome into which the fetial spear could be thrust for the purpose of officially declaring war on her foreign adversaries.49By then, the Romans were no longer following an exclusively defensive foreign policy for keeping the barbarians out of their dominions, but also one of actively going out to conquer the barbarians in order to add to them.50Neither Augustus nor his legates felt constrained by frontiers, natural or of their own making. Vergil expresses the mood of the age in the way only a poet could by putting in the mouth of Iupiter, king of the gods, these rousing words:

  The people Romans call, the city Rome.

  To them no bounds of empire I assign,

  Nor term of years to their immortal line.

  Ev’n haughty Juno, who, with endless broils,

  Earth, seas, and heav’n, and Jove himself turmoils;

  At length aton’d, her friendly pow’r shall join,

  To cherish and advance the Trojan line.

  The subject world shall Rome’s dominion own,

  And, prostrate, shall adore the nation of the gown.51

  Even these lofty sentiments may yet disguise the real reason for the war of conquest north of the Alps. There was perhaps another deeper psychological motive, one that often drives monarchs and autocrats to act as they do. As Florus puts it

  but because he knew that Caesar, his father, had twice made bridges over the Rhine to prosecute the war against the country, he was desirous in honour of him, to make it a province.52

  In other words, dressed up as an act of homage, Augustus wanted to prove to the world he was at least the equal of his celebrated father. There had even been speculation that Augustus might complete what his stepfather had begun and finish the conquest of Britannia, but that would have to wait.53Finding a solution to the German question now took preëminence.

  Even while Augustus was in Lugdunum, the proconsul of Illyricum was engaging nations of the eastern Alps in the region between Como and Lake Garda.54Among the steep and craggy valleys there P. Silius Nerva succeeded in subduing the Camunni and Vennii.55It was only the latest piecemeal attempt to conquer the Alps and its independent-minded, free-spirited peoples. In 34 BCE, Augustus’ deputy Antistius Verus had attacked the Salassi nation in the western Alps but was repulsed and it was not until nine years later that Terrentius Varro finally brought it to heel.56In 25 BCE, the colonia of Augusta Praetoria Salassorrum (Aosta) w
as founded on the vacated site of Varro’s summer camp in what was becoming a rolling programme of establishing settlements of Roman veterans in the occupied frontier zone.57Over the next decade, the Roman army nudged ever further north, establishing forts and watchtowers in Basel, Oberwinterthur, Windisch and Zürich to control access through the valleys and passes in what must surely have been unpopular tours of duty for regular troops posted there during the winter months.58Clearly Augustus set his sights on annexing the Alps for some time.

  The indigenous people were not, however, content to accept the encroachment of Roman settlers in what they considered to be their own territory. They viewed raiding Roman settlements as retaliation for seeing their lands invaded. The Raeti were particularly troubling to the Roman communities of northern Italy who lived in terror of them. The Raeti community was not a single nation state, though they spoke a common language, but a large clan comprising smaller groups which lived in the great sweep of what is now southern Bavaria, Tyrol and eastern Switzerland, reaching down to Lombardy in northern Italy, just north of Verona and Comum – the region variously called Gallia Cisalpina or Gallia Togata (‘toga-wearing Gaul’) or Gallia Transpadana prior to 42 BCE (the part of Cisalpine Gaul between the Po and the Alps).59The Raeti resisted the Romans with all means at their disposal. They raided into Gallia Comata and Cisalpina, and Roman and allied merchants and travellers were frequently harassed as they went about their peaceful business. This was to be expected of barbarians, notes Dio wrily, but the gruesomeness of some acts committed by the Raeti went beyond the pale, for instance, when they slew not only all their male captives “but also those who were still in the women’s wombs, the sex of whom they discovered by some means of divination”.60To civilised Romans, this wanton terrorism could not be allowed to continue. Roman blood had been spilled. Augustus now had his casus belli, if he needed one, to embark on a military campaign to take the central region of the Alps.