How large a population inhabited the Alps at this time is not known because the archaeological record is so sparse. The written record of the classical authors is almost all that we have to go on. The recurring theme in the extant Roman accounts is the savagery of the Alpine nations, though this may only be a stereotype of behaviour they, and their readers, expected of uncivilized ‘barbarians’ so it may not be entirely accurate. As the Romans advanced the Raeti likely took to higher ground or retreated up the Pass and resorted to ever more desperate measures. When they used up their arsenals, records Florus, the women used their own children as weapons, smashing their heads against the ground and flinging their limp bodies at the approaching Romans.245 Notwithstanding their alleged ferocity, Drusus’ army systematically subdued them. To secure their gains and to establish a line of bi-directional communications, troops were stationed at intervals along the route of the Roman advance. In 1999 traces of a barn belonging to a poststation of the imperial courier service (cursus publicus) were discovered in the Wiese northeast of Biberwier near Lermoos in sight of the spectacular Zugspitze, modern Germany’s highest mountain at 2,962 metres (9,717.8 feet).246
Beyond Füssen the descent was steady. In just a few weeks, Drusus’ troops were able to emerge into the foothills of the Schwäbisch-Bayerisches Alpenvorland (plate 17). Drusus may have reported back by courier or in person to Augustus in Lugdunum with news of his swift victory. Receiving the news, Augustus was suitably impressed by his stepson’s achievement and promptly rewarded Drusus with the official rank of praetor, which entitled him to a bodyguard of six lictors.247 He had proved himself able to command an army in the field and deliver victory on demand. Having defeated the Raeti and ensuring they had been “repulsed from Italia” that may have been as far as Augustus initially wanted to take military operations for the time being.248 However, the Raeti were not to be kept down and they continued with their incursions, this time spilling into neighbouring Gallia Comata. The very strategy designed to quell the Raeti, perhaps, had had the unintended consequence of displacing them. It was becoming “a difficult war”.249 Augustus was in no mood to compromise and ordered a complete subjugation of the Raetic people. He dispatched his eldest stepson with an army from Gaul and orders to assist his brother in squashing the unruly Alpine nations once and for all.250
In Gaul Tiberius was already mobilising the legions under his command – likely the I, XVII, XVIII and XIX – for transfer from Aquitania to the Rhine at the time, but was ordered to divert them to deal with the continuing Raetian menace. The name of his legate in charge of Legio XIX is known to have been P. Quinctilius Varus.251 Now thirty-one years of age, Varus had succeeded in impressing Augustus and this was his first major military leadership position. At the head of this tactical land force Tiberius likely approached from Lugdunum following the course of the River Rhône (Rhodanus) or the Jura Mountains, and in so doing succeeded in securing the Alpes Poeninae and the important road that traversed it. In parts the route between the Jura and Rhodanus was particularly perilous. In the Commentaries on the Gallic War, Iulius Caesar wrote of passages narrowing to such an extent that wagons could move only in single file or a few men could pass at a time.252 Tiberius may have split his troops and taken the Rhine route via Walensee, or additionally the Valais over the Furka Pass.253 Meanwhile Drusus’ men marched from their positions in the Voralpenland to the source of the Rhine or followed the Danube to its source.254 The Roman accounts imply a co-ordinated strategy preagreed between the two Claudius Nero brothers. Following the valleys of the Alps the brothers closed in on the enemy, picking one tribe off at a time. Velleius Paterculus talks of the brothers attacking the Raeti and Vindelici “on different sides”.255 Dio writes “both leaders then invaded Raetia at many points simultaneously, either in person or through their deputies”.256 Some commentators interpret this as a pincer movement inferring some final target, but in practice their movements were dictated by the landscape of valleys and passes (map 3). The theatre of war now encompassed a wide area and many modes of combat. They fought in pitched battles that saw few Roman casualties, but heavy losses among their opponents.257 Rivers and lakes posed few obstacles to the eager generals. When Tiberius reached a major lake, which may have been Lake Geneva, rather than march his men around the shoreline, he took the shortest route.258 He ordered his men to construct boats with which they launched an audacious amphibious operation to reach the other side. Attacked both on land and lake, the Raetian resistance faultered and finally collapsed.
The brothers had executed brilliantly, combining speed, superior equipment, discipline and a predetermined strategy to win themselves a total victory in the difficult terrain of the Alps.259 Even the boldest of the Raeti, the Cotuantii and Rucantii, were no match for them.260 Unlike the Raeti who killed all their male captives, the mopping up operations that followed reveal the Romans’ penchant for social engineering. Dio comments that Raetia had a disproportionate number of males. Drusus and Tiberius could not take the risk that they might be tempted to pick another fight with them. Their solution was to round up the male population of military age and deport them leaving just sufficient manpower behind to cultivate the land “but too few to begin a revolution”.261 Many ended up in the service of Rome: five units of Cohors Alpinorum and eight units of Cohors Raetorum were raised during Augustus’ reign which saw service all over the empire.262
Bellum Noricum
It was now summer. Augustus may have given the order, or the Claudius brothers saw an opportunity and took the initiative, to engage and subjugate the tough warriors of the Vindelici and Norici nations living on northern side of the Alps stretching down to the banks of the River Danube. Strabo reports that like the Raeti, these mountain peoples raided their neighbours, who included the Boii, Helvetii, Sequani and even the Germanic tribes over the Danube.263 The boldest and bravest of the Vindelici by reputation were the Clautenatii, Licatii and Vennones.264 The Norici and Vindelici were particularly feared for their brutality and cruelty. Like the reports describing the antics of the Raeti, their treatment of captives was allegedly harsh. Male captives faced death and they slaughtered the pregnant mothers of the as-yet unborn males being carried in their wombs using divination to identify them.265
Siege Warfare
The region north of the Alps to the Danube covers an area of approximately 80,000 square kilometers (30,888.2 square miles). The Norici and Vindelici lived in organized communities in what could be described as cities (oppida), examples of which have been found in Berching/Pollanten, Bullenheimer Berg (Würzburg), Burgberg (Donaustauf), Fentbach (Weyarn), Hesselberg (Dinkelsbühl), Manching and Michelsberg (Kehlheim).266 Many were built with strong defensive ditches and banks surmounted by parapets. For Celtic warriors these may have seemed formidable defences, but the Roman army was expert in siege craft. The oppidum of the Genauni provided a valuable opportunity for Drusus to see these techniques executed first hand.267 Arriving at the stronghold Drusus, the legate of the legion and his praefectus castrorum would have first assessed the best approach for a siege. Drusus would have known of examples of successful sieges from Roman history, notably from reading Iulius Caesar’s own accounts of taking the Gallic oppida at Avaricum and Alésia (Mont Auxois) in 52 BCE.268 If the goal was to starve the defenders into submission, a blockade was called for. At Alésia, Caesar surrounded the hill-top citadel occupied by Vercingetorix and the Mandubii with a double curtain wall or circumvallation, the inner one 18 kilometres (11.2 miles) of 4 metre (13.1 feet) high fortifications, the outer one 21 kilometres (13.0 miles) of the same height.269 Two 4.5 metre (14.8 feet) wide ditches, about 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) deep, were dug in front of the inner circumvallation, one of them filled with water. His men also covered the ground in front with metal spikes and calthrops, and dug pits with sharpened stakes in the centre – which the soldiers nicknamed lilia on account of their resemblance to the flowers – and planted a continuous hedge of pointed branches facing towards the enemy.270 The purpo
se of these extensive works was as much to stop Gallic reinforcements getting in as the defenders breaking out.
This late in the campaign season, Drusus did not have time to hole up his opponent and wait to starve him out. The alternative to a blockade was to attack the objective in a direct assault. At Avaricum (Bourges) in 52 BCE Caesar’s engineers constructed great ramps 100 metres (328.0 feet) long of wooden logs stacked 25 metres (82.0 feet) high to fill a gap between their camp and the citadel of the Bituriges in just twenty-five days.271 Then great siege towers were moved along the ramps close to the walls of the oppidum from which legionaries were able to scale the battlements. An assault could be expedited using artillery and in this the Romans were also experts. Roman artillery was based on technology using the energy stored in a ‘spring’ of twisted animal gut or horsehair.272 In a tension weapon, such as a ballista, an arm lodged in the tension spring is pulled back. When the trigger is pulled, the energy is released hurling a stone over several hundred metres. The large stone throwing ballista was nicknamed the onager, meaning wild ass, on account of its sudden kick. In a torsion weapon such as a catapult, one or two arms under constant tension are drawn back like a crossbow, building up greater energy in the spring. Released by a trigger, the arms fly forward unleashing the bowstring and propelling with it a sharp or iron-tipped bolt (figure 2). Roman models were mounted on static stands, which could be adjusted up or down to offer different trajectories; or mounted on wheeled carts pulled by mules for mobile artillery.273 Small catapults (kheiroballistrae) could be operated by a two-man crew and were nicknamed scorpiones. Each legion had sixty bolt-firing catapults, including small, light artillery and the heavy stone-throwing ballistae. En masse they could be used to devastating effect. In 43 or 44 CE during the conquest of Britannia, legatus T. Flavius Vespasianus led Legio II Augusta in a siege of the oppidum of the Durotriges.274 The excavation of Maiden Castle in the 1940s revealed that the Roman artillery gunners had concentrated their field of fire on the huts of the chieftain. Archaeologists found the backbone of one of the defenders with an iron bolt still lodged between the vertebrae.275 Battering rams would then be deployed to smash down the locked gates of the hill-fort – if they were not first thrown open by the surrendering defenders. By such means, Drusus’ men stormed “many towns and strongholds” with ruthless efficiency.276 The citadel of the Genauni is recorded as having fallen to Drusus on 1 Sextilis (1 August) – the same date Octavianus took Alexandria from Kleopatra fifteen years earlier.277 The neighbouring Kingdom of Noricum had co-existed peacefully with the Romans since establishing formal relations in 186 BCE.278 At the time of Caesar’s Gallic War Noricum was ruled by King Voccio, a brother-in-law of Ariovistus.279 It is unlikely that Voccio was still alive when Drusus and his legions invaded, however, a direct descendant may have been.280 The royal family’s wealth and influence had been built on exploiting both the region’s mineral resources and its geographic location. The land had rich reserves of gold, silver and manganese-containing iron ores, which Norican miners extracted. Craftsmen forged the iron ore from Hüttenberger Erzberg into ingots called ferrum Noricum, which was well known across the Roman Empire.281 Situated in lands crossed by trade routes from the Alps to the Danube and Gaul, the local Norican aristocracy grew wealthy. From 70 BCE they began minting coins showing that their economy was developing from one based on barter and exchange to one based on cash. The principal city of Noricum was Virunum, which was an oppidum atop the 1,058 metre (3,471.1 feet) high Magdalensberg with its commanding views of the wide valley across to the Zollfeld and the Ulrichsberg hills (plate 20). The earliest buildings in it were of timber, which can be dated to around 100 BCE.282 Below it on a south-facing terrace was a Roman trading colony.283 It was an outward looking community and Norican traders enjoyed business with Roman enterprises located on the other side of the mountains in Aquileia.284 The influence of Roman material culture is demonstrated by the fact that from 30 BCE the traders’ houses were built in stone and being decorated with murals depicting classical mythological scenes painted by immigrant Roman artists. The city even boasted a Roman-style forum. The wealth of the nation made Noricum a tempting target for annexation. Cutting out the middleman trading in highly prized commodities may actually have been one of the primary but tacit reasons for the Romans taking the kingdom by force.
Figure 2: Catapult bolt from the Roman camp at Döttenbichl, Oberammergau shows the unmistakable stamp of Legio XIX. The bent tang suggests it was fired in anger. (Drawn by the author)
Since relations with the kingdom were evidently good, the realisation that the Romans now intended to annex Noricum must have come as a shock to the royal family. What happened is not clear from the archaeological evidence. Perhaps they retreated to their hill top citadel. Florus remarks the Norici fooled themselves into thinking that war could not reach “the Alps and their snows”.285 This phrase seems to be rather more for narrative effect than an accurate account of the situation on the ground. It was high summer when the Romans invaded and the valleys were clear of snow; and the Norican people lived for the most part on hilltops set in fertile farmland not on snow-capped mountain peaks. Nevertheless, some Celts must surely have fought with gritty determination to defend their homeland from the unwarranted attack by the invaders who, after all, were supposed to be their allies. When the gates of Virunum were breached – indeed, they may actually have been thrown open peacefully after diplomatic exchanges – any Norican resistance collapsed. The kingdom of Noricum fell to the brothers Claudius.
It had been a glorious campaign. Together the young Romans had put a stop to the incursions of the unruly tribes “by means of a single summer campaign”.286 The news of the astonishingly quick victory played well with the audience at home. Augustus himself was well pleased with the outcome of the war. In his Res Gestae he boasted,
I brought peace to the Alps from the region which is near the Adriatic Sea to the Tuscan, with no unjust war waged against any nation.287
He was quick to exploit its propaganda value. New coins were struck showing the figure of Augustus presented as a magistrate in a toga seated on a distinctive curule chair (sella curulis) placed on a raised dais, his right arm outstretched reaching down to receive olive branches from two armed figures wearing cloaks (plate 19).288 These men are intended to be understood as Drusus and Tiberius. It was a carefully calculated political message designed to promote an ‘ideology of victory’.289 Central to this propaganda message was the princeps assumed all credit for military victories, especially those carried out by his deputies (legati).290 Augustus’ two trusted legati had brought him victory and the army lauded him his achievement. Below the figures in exergue is the legend ‘IMP X’ attesting to the acclamation of Augustus as imperator ten times by the men of the legions up to that point in time. On the obverse a fine portait of a youthful Augustus in profile is surrounded by the legend ‘AVGVSTVS DIVI F’ – Augustus divi filius – ‘Augustus son of a god’. The god in question was Iulius Caesar, the conqueror of the tres Galliae. He had crossed the Alps, but not subjugated its peoples – whereas his successor and avenger had and, moreover, had done so in a single year, rather than the nine it had taken his divine father. Behind the surface, there was, however, another mythological interpretation of divi filius. There was a tale that Augustus’ mother Atia had been sexually seduced by a serpent while sleeping in the Temple of Apollo and that he was the son of that union.291 Another coin minted the same year shared the same obverse, but the reverse showed the figure of Apollo Citharoedus, his head wreathed in laurel, hand holding a lyre, and below the legend ‘IMP X’ in exergue.292 Apollo was Augustus’ personal god, the divinity to whom he dedicated his victory at Actium.293 It promised a glorious future. Under the sun god’s – and the son of the sun god’s – aegis Augustus and his stepsons would bring yet more victories and glory to the Roman commonwealth.
Yet from now on Drusus was an unwitting instrument in the regime’s imperial propaganda machine. In Drusus and h
is brother, Augustus had two young all-Roman heroes he could hold up as champions of the new age.294 Perhaps at Augustus’ own urging, the princeps’ favourite poet Q. Horatius Flaccus (Horace) set to work on the fourth in his Carmina series of poems.295 It was published in 13 BCE. Set to music he sang his hyperbolic verses,
What honours can a grateful Rome,
A grateful senate, Caesar, give
To make thy worth through days to come
Emblazon’d on our records live,
Mightiest of chieftains whomsoe’er
The sun beholds from heaven on high?
They know thee now, thy strength in war,
Those unsubdued Vindelici.
Thine was the sword that Drusus drew,
When on the Breunian hordes he fell,
And storm’d the fierce Genaunian crew
E’en in their Alpine citadel,
And paid them back their debt twice told.296
The young Drusus had not flinched in the face of battle, sang Horace, despite his inexperience. He had demonstrated virtus in the best Claudian tradition. The brothers seemed invincible in the face even of the most brutal and savage of foes:
What will not Claudian hands achieve?
Jove’s favour is their guiding star,
And watchful potencies unweave
For them the tangled paths of war.297
Led by Drusus and his brother, Roman armies now had control of all the major passes of the Alps, connecting the Mediterranean world under Rome’s influence through the Voralpenland of Southern Germany to the banks of the River Danube.298 To secure the newly won gains Drusus’ legions dug in for the winter in Raetia and Vindelicia. Their winter camps may have included Auerberg, Augsberg-Oberhausen, Bregenz, Chur, Dangstetten, Gauting, Lorenzberg at Epfach, and Kempten.299 Evidence from inscriptions suggests one or more legions – or at least detachments of them – stayed until redeployed out of the area between 12 BCE and 12 CE.300
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