Yet it seems from the archaeological record that the Gallic populations felt more at home in small communities located in the plains below their ancestral oppida. These townships (vici) and villages (pagi), often unplanned, arose out of their convenient location, such as at road intersections and river crossings; or in response to commercial opportunities, such as to service a local Roman military contingent which had arrived to build sections of road or bridges. They produced goods from a range of local craftworking skills, from clothmaking to woodworking, metalworking to pottery making, providing the Roman army and its lixae with essential staples and luxuries.43A few vici, such as at Alésia, Mâlain and Vidy, Lousonna, show evidence that formal street patterns were laid out in the period 20–10 BCE, suggesting that the Roman authorities recognised their value.44Their inherently organic nature meant some pagi and vici were more dynamic than the organised civitates, as was the case at Cenabum (Orléans) whose development outpaced that of Autricum (Chartres). In other parts of the country, however, the native population did not respond well to the invitation to adopt the Roman way. In the settlement of Burdigala overlooking the Garonne River, for example, or at Vorgium (Carhaix), life continued much as it had done before the arrival of Iulius Caesar, and these cities remained empty.45Here the Romans built it, but the Gauls resolutely did not come.
In this state of fragile development, it was not at all certain that the provinces Drusus had come to govern would be successful. He would need a deft touch and pursuasive manner to foster good relations between the conqueror and conquered. There was the ever-present danger that a corrupt official could undo all his good work. A case in point is the extraordinary and salutary story of C. Iulius Licinus.46He was a Gallic Celt who had been enslaved by Iulius Caesar and after having been freed and adopting his master’s praenomen and nomen, had come to prominence through him. Under Augustus he had been appointed procurator Augusti provinciae, the agent responsible for collecting taxes and whose fiduciary duty was deliberately separated from those of the governor.47He exploited his insights into Gallic psychology and the prestige of his position in the Roman administration to pull off a scam that duped many an unsuspecting Celt. A jealous and avaricious man, he tried to bring down his rivals and anyone who seemed more powerful than him. Among the scandalous tricks he played was to claim that December was in fact the tenth month (the Latin for ten being decem) of the year. Taxpayers were told that they still owed two more months to cover their liability. By this and other undisclosed ruses Licinus amassed a great fortune for himself and his closest friends. Too late the Gauls realised that they had been cheated and they approached Augustus during his sojourn in Tres Galliae with their complaints, which, if they were Roman citizens was their right. Licinus knew he had to act fast to avoid being tried in court on a corruption charge. He was Augustus’ own man and the princeps was vexed by the accusation as it reflected badly on him personally, but it also posed something of a dilemma and he tried to offer excuses for his procurator’s behaviour. Finally Augustus quizzed Licinus directly. The procurator laughed scornfully at the accusations, but sensing the princeps was displeased, he invited Augustus to his house. There in dramatic fashion he revealed a treasure trove of gold and silver and announced that he had, in fact, gathered it for the specific benefit of Augustus and the Roman people. He added sinisterly that had the Galli kept such a vast amount of coin and treasure they might have been tempted to revolt. By promptly handing over the booty and hoodwinking the head of state, Licinus saved his own skin. The scoundrel was likely still serving as procurator during Drusus’ governorship of Tres Galliae, presumably now more careful in his dealings and chastened by the affair – and aware of how closely he had come to disaster.
As in every age, collecting taxes was a serious business. Whereas during Caesar’s war of conquest and the years of the civil wars the Gallic nations had been asked to provide men and horses to bolster the ranks of the Roman army, in the era of peace ushered in by Augustus it was cold, hard cash that the Gauls were now being asked for.48Augustus needed funds for his forthcoming war across the Rhine. As a result of his beneficence, some communities responded and paid Augustus handsomely.49Nevertheless, accurate assessments of the assets of the population were needed to calculate the tax basis and were routinely undertaken in the form of a nationwide census usually held every five years (lustrum). Augustus had himself overseen a census of the three Gallic provinces in 27 BCE while holding assizes in Narbonensis.50It was a major undertaking that required careful planning. Roman citizens living in Italia were exempt from direct taxes – an entitlement called the ‘Italian Right’ – but those resident outside were not. Outside Rome, the census was supervised by a team of censitores and their assistants (censuales) who undertook to complete a register of Roman citizens and their property. The governor, however, might perform the duties or assign his deputies to do so.51Many of the requirements of the census are known from the Digest of the jurist Domitius Ulpianus who lived in the second century CE.52He records that it required that the person registering make estimates himself of all his estates – acreages of arable, pasture and woodland, numbers of trees, olive trees and vines, ponds, harbours and saltpans – and detail his slaves – by number, age, nationality, functions and skills. Concessions were made for landslides that took land out of production and for withered vines or dead trees that reduced the total taxable output of the commodities. It was a heavily labour intensive procedure, requiring each registrant to be interviewed in person and notes to be recorded by hand. The entire operation was controlled, however, from Lugdunum but registrants may have been required to go to a designated town where the censitor had set up his information gathering operations.53An indication of the grand scale of the retinue such an official brought with him survives on the tombstone of Musicus Scurranus who served as an imperial dispensator ad fiscum Gallicum provinciae Lugdunensis under Tiberius and died when he returned to Rome. It tells us that accompanying Scurranus was a crew of freedmen and slaves, including a business agent and an accountant, three assistants, a physician, two slaves responsible for silver and one for the wardrobe, two chamberlains, two footmen, two cooks and a woman of unspecified role and responsibility.54For many of the Gallic aristocracy it would have seemed an unnecessary, even an intolerable, intrusion into their personal affairs. They resented the foreigners poking their noses in their private business and the inevitably higher taxes levied on it. The communities that did not respond well to Augustus’ policy had freedoms and Roman citizenship taken away.55
The episode in 16 or 15 BCE with Licinus does serve to illustrate, however, that the machinery of government and its complaints procedure did work. That Licinus mentioned the potential for rebellion shows that among some members of the population, resentment festered. The challenge for Augustus and Drusus was to align the aspirations of the native Gallic élites with those of the Romans. They needed a common vision for the region, a shared dream.
As he rose through the cursus honorum Drusus was becoming known for his devotion to public service and his support of the institutions of the res publica.56Suetonius records that he made no secret of his desire of restoring the traditional form of government – which was another way of saying he intended to replace the autocracy of Augustus – “whenever he should have the power”.57His position of authority in the Tres Galliae may have given him precisely the opportunity to practice what he preached. In a stroke of genius, some time during the period 14–12 BCE Drusus conceived the idea of creating a ‘Gallic Council’ (concilium Galliarum). Even during the war of conquest Iulius Caesar had noticed that the Gauls enjoyed coming together in conferences where they could indulge in their love of rhetoric and the companionship of peers.58The congress proposed by Drusus would be a federal representative assembly for the communities of Tres Galliae.59The idea had been tried before with success in Greece and Lycia-Pamphyilia where koina brought together members of a league of cities.60It could be argued that the assembly would be little more t
han a talking shop, as it was not an organisation of devolved power or decision making – it could not make laws or raise taxation, for example. However, in one key respect the concilium Galliarum would fulfill an important function: it brought together the élites of the cities (primores), gave them a larger platform on which to express themselves, and reinforced their status and control in their own communities. They could, on the other hand, bring grievances to the notice of assembly members and the presiding propraetor, and proffer advice on measures intended to apply to the entire province.
The assembly would also be responsible for overseeing the imperial cult. By the time of Drusus’ governorship, the cult of Roma et Augustus was just becoming established and being seen as a useful political tool to align the interest of Roman conqueror and the conquered. The cult of the living emperor was formulated and sanctioned by Octavianus in 30/29 BCE in response to requests from the commonwealths of Asia and Bithynia to worship his living person as their ‘deliverer’ or ‘saviour’, two or three years before the senate voted him the title Augustus.61Sensitive to the political ramifications, Octavianus stipulated that any provincial cult dedicated to him must be jointly offered to dea Dia and at cult centres to be built at Nicomedia and Pergamum. Additionally, provincials who were also Roman citizens were not permitted to worship the living emperor, but could express their devotion to dea Roma and the divus Iulius at precincts in Ephesus and Nicaea.62The first recorded regional cults to Augustus in the western provinces were established with his permission around a decade later in northwestern Spain and named arae Sestianae after their military founder, L. Sestius Quirinalis Albinianus.63Tiberius officially inaugurated the cult of divus Augustus in 18 BCE, and an oracle pronounced that ludi saeculares should be held in celebration of the ‘new golden age’ – the games that were held the year preceeding the ludi that Drusus helped his brother to organise.
The cult required a sanctuary (fanum) and a priesthood (sacerdos) to conduct ceremonies and rites. The chosen site was the floodplain in the valley at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers, facing the acropolis of Lugdunum in full view of the governor’s palace. There may already have been a sacred grove in this place before the Romans arrived.64A simple altar would not do, however. The site would have to be a physical manifestation of the very best of Gallic and Roman cultures, combining fine architecture with high ritual. It would need to be a fitting venue for a festival and competitions of vocal and musical arts, akin to a Welsh eisteddfod, beloved of the Celts, as well as for spectacles of blood sports so much enjoyed by the Romans. Drusus commissioned plans for a spectacular complex comprising of a large altar (ara), an avenue of statues and an amphitheatre.65It would take time to build, but the creation of the assembly and the sanctuary under Drusus quickly struck a chord with the Gallic aristocracy. It is significant that the three Gallic provinces were the only territories in the western Roman Empire to institute a concilium and that it was to endure for three centuries.66
Preparations for the German War
From affairs of peace, Drusus had to quickly turn his attention to matters of war. Augustus had appointed Drusus expressly to prosecute his war of conquest of Germania Magna.67The objective of the German War (Bellum Germanicum) has been speculated upon by generations of historians. It is generally assumed that the strategic imperative for the campaign was to reach the Elbe River (Albis) and establish it as a new frontier.68The generally held assumption among modern historians is that Augustus intended the Elbe-Danube to mark a new frontier line that would be easier to defend compared to the Rhine-Danube line.69Yet the ancient written accounts upon which the interpretation is based were published long after the outcome of the war was a matter of public record. Moreover it presupposes the Romans had good maps from which to make this determination. The Romans certainly had maps. The earliest Roman map dating to 174 BCE was of Sardinia. Varro (127–116 BCE) had produced books with cartographic illustrations which were widely circulated and he knew of the world maps of the Greek geographer Eratosthenes. Iulius Caesar had begun work on a world map but died before it was completed. With his ambitions for imperial conquest, Augustus needed a complete and up-to-date map of the world (Orbis Terrarum) and he commissioned Agrippa to produce it.70Agrippa was an ideal choice for overseeing such an important project. He was well travelled, having traversed and seen the major regions of the empire by land and sea. He had an architect’s eye for detail and a military tactician’s eye for topography. He, more than any other man in the administration, had as complete as was possible at that time a view of the known-world – and had an insight into the extent to which the world beyond was unknown. Agrippa assigned a team of Greek freedmen to carry out the research and make sense of the differing sources of information – Iulius Caesar’s unfinished map, centuriation maps, campaign maps, interviews with merchants, resident aliens, colonists and officials returning to Rome. In 15 BCE the map was still a work-in-progress and it would not be finished until the later part of Augustus’ reign. Sadly none of it survives today. By coincidence, a chorographist from Pontus called Strabo was assembling similar information for his Geographika. It is not known if Agrippa’s team was aware of his work, and in any case it was not published until 10 CE, but in the absence of the Orbis Terrarum it does give us an idea of the state of contemporary geographic and ethnographical knowledge of the world. In key respects it was wanting. The Romans’ understanding of Germania and its peoples was in large part based on encounters during military campaigns, such as by Iulius Caesar, whose account had only been published three decades earlier.71There had been no meaningful engagement since that time to update that account.
Pliny the Elder was well acquainted with the finished version of Agrippa’s map and its accompanying Commentarii geographici and quoted it frequently in his encyclopaedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History). It put the city of Rome in the centre of a circular representation of the three known continents – Europe, Africa and Asia (map 5). The continents were represented more or less as equally sized landmasses. A great ocean surrounded the three continents so that it theoretically was possible to circumnavigate the world. Italy was shown as a stubby projection into the Mediterranean. About 80 per cent of the surface area of the map was deemed to be ruled by Rome – presumably so it could show cities, the road network, major rivers, provincial boundaries and allow space for text. India, Seres (China), Scythia and Sarmatia (Russia) were shown, but as small nations out on the edge of the world. Pliny’s main criticism was that Agrippa’s map underestimated the distances over land and overrepresented distances by sea. He was incandescent, for example, that Agrippa could have misjudged the length of the province of Baetica in Hispania:
Who is there that can entertain the belief that Agrippa, a man of such extra-ordinary diligence, and one who bestowed so much care on his subject, when he proposed to place before the eyes of the world a survey of that world, could be guilty of such a mistake as this, and that too when seconded by the late emperor the divine Augustus?72
Studying the Orbis Terrarum Augustus would have understood Germania Magna to be smaller than it in fact was. The map suggested the distance between the Ocean beyond China and the Rhine River was only three and half times the distance across Gallia. For the purposes of planning a military campaign, these distortions could have very significant consequences.73Gaul had taken some eight years to conquer under Caesar, though it took many more years to finally subjugate under Augustus. Based on the relative assessment of the extent of Germania Magna, it may have appeared that conquest could be achieved as quickly.74So in practice, the Romans were largely ignorant of the region they were setting out to conquer.75It is entirely possible that Augustus had no limit in mind at all and envisaged a Roman realm extending to the very ends of the Earth – or at least as far as Roman dominion could practicably extend.76In the absence of detailed intelligence about the region between the Rhine and Elbe rivers, Augustus would simply not have known where to fix the line of Rome’s northern fro
ntier.77In the end pragmatics would determine the drawing of the line, the limes as the Romans called the frontier, and that decision would be down to Drusus as the commander in the field to make.
How much of the final strategy for the invasion was Drusus’ own work is difficult to say based on the available evidence. Most likely, it was a composite of many contributors, including Drusus, and his legates such as Sex. Vistilius, and finally approved by Augustus himself.78Augustus was a conservative man by nature, disinclined to take wild gambles and he preferred to act only after having planned his moves thoroughly. One of his tenets was “that is done fast enough, which is done well”.79Throughout his career he had been assisted by Agrippa and it is highly likely that he would have contributed in a significant way to crafting the strategy for Germania. Agrippa was twice propraetor for the region – from the spring of 39 BCE to the autumn of 38 BCE and again from June 20 BCE to the spring of 18 BCE.80He was a superb strategist and tactician and the brains behind the decisive victories at sea at Actium (31 BCE) and on land against the Astures and Cantabri in Hispania (29–19 BCE). He was well travelled and knew key places first hand – he was, after all, also only the second man, after Iulius Caesar, to have crossed the Rhine, and had personal knowledge of the barbarian world beyond it. Before he left for Syria he would surely have discussed a grand strategy with Augustus, who was leaving without him to go to Tres Galliae to address the matter of what to do about Germania – even if it was only idle conversation over dinner?
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