Eager for Glory

by Philip Lindsay Powell

  The amphibious assault ship for transporting ground troops may have been of the sea-going ‘bireme’ design, which the Romans called a ‘long ship’ (navis longa). As they copied this design of small, highly manoeuvreable ship from models developed by the Liburnians, a people who lived in Illyricum, it was often referred to as a ‘Liburnian’ (liburna). As shown on Trajan’s Column, it has a characteristic long narrow hull, an upwardly curving prow at water level, a high bulwark at the bow and an in-swinging bulwark at the stern. Modern estimates give the bireme a length of up to 33 metres (109 feet), and a width of 5 metres (16 feet) wide with a 0.91 metre (3 feet) draft.31Two rows of oarsmen pulled eighteen oars per side. The crews could have been drawn from non-citizen provincials, probably local Gauls and Batavians, supplemented with freedmen – which raises the question of what to do with them once the fleet reached its destination because of their non-military status – or the soldiers rowed themselves.32Tacitus says as much when he mentions “the enthusiasm of our soldiers” in the use of sails and oars in 15 CE.33The liburna has outriggers to accommodate the oarsmen on either side, seated in two tiers, one above the other. The ship could make more than 7 knots under oars but up to 14 knots under sail.34The gubernator sat on an elevated platform so that he had an unobstructed view over the heads of the top deck upon which the troops being ferried assembled. A ship of this size could carry some 80-armed men, allowing for their arms, armour, and personal baggage. Sixty such biremes would be needed to transport a full legion.35

  Figure 3: Reconstruction of a troop transport based onthe ship labelled ‘Mainz 1’. Built three hundred years after Drusus’ campaigns it nevertheless typifies the kind of craft – powered by oar or sail – he used to ferry his troops into Germania Magna.

  Recent finds in Oberstimm and Mainz, however, point to a more modest design of troop transport. In 1986 two ships were uncovered west of a Roman fort at Oberstimm near Ingolstadt on a tributary of the Danube River.36The ships were dated dendrochronologically to 80–110 CE. One of the ships measured 15.70 metres (51.5 feet) long, 2.70 metres (8.9 feet) wide and 1 metre (3.3 feet) high and there was evidence for a crew of 20, with 10 oarsmen on each side (fig. 3). The ship could also move under sail. Its planks were made of fir assembled with mortice and tenon joints secured with wooden pegs while its keel was made of oak. Under the auspices of the University of Hamburg a faithful reconstruction of this ship was launched in 2008.37In tests the ship named Victoria proved very swift, achieving speeds of 5 knots under oar and 7.4 under sail, and in tests was remarkably manoeuvrable being able to turn a full 180 degrees in just 30 seconds.38

  Five years earlier, while the foundations of the Hilton Hotel were being dug between Löhrstraße and Rheinstraße in Mainz, remains of five Roman ships were uncovered. Now housed in the Museum for Ancient Shipping of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, they have been thoroughly studied and exquisite reconstructions made of them.39 The ships date to the late third and early fourth centuries CE. The remains revealed that the ships measured between 17 and 21 metres (55.8 to 69.0 feet) in length, their maximum height was 90 centimetres (35.4 inches) and the width at midship of the largest vessel was a little over 2.7 metres (8.9 feet).40 The dimensions of the Mainz vessels suggest a crew of 27 to 35 men of whom between 24 and 32 were oarsmen sitting 12 to 16 in each row. The crew would have been joined by a steersman and two additional men to operate the sails.

  The Oberstimm and Mainz vessels seem to better fit Tacitus’ description of ships with a “small draught with a narrow stem and stern and a broad centre”.41 The design and size of these craft mean that the soldiers must have rowed themselves. Three or more of these ships would have been required to ferry a full centuria. A recent estimate of the shipping required for the expeditionary force for the conquest of Britannia in 43 CE under A. Plautius, in which four legions (20,000 men at arms), ten alae (5,000 men) and auxiliary cohorts (15,000 men) were deployed, including 8,250 animals plus wagons and supplies, suggests 933 vessels were needed.42 This is remarkably close to the 800 ships in Iulius Caesar’s fleet, which carried his men to Britannia in 54 BCE, and the 1,000 ships commissioned for the expedition into Germania in 15 CE.43 Assuming three ships were required to ferry a centuria, and there were sixty centuries to a legion, that 1,000 ships equates to five legions in the case of the expedition under Germanicus.44 To build a fleet of such a size required a massive supply of timber. Recent work around the site of Batavodurum reveals that the Kops Plateau near Nijmegen was once originally densely wooded with oak and birch trees, but these were completely cleared away in the Augustan period.45 Were they felled to provide the wood required to build the Roman invasion fleet? It seems likely. The cleared land would have also provided a convenient assembly point for the expeditionary force.

  The Rhineland Germanic nations having been quelled, the legions returned to their ships and Drusus gave the order for the invasion of Germania by sea and the fleet now “sailed down the Rhine to the ocean” (plate 22).46 The Fossa Drusiana provided safe passage for the fleet between the Rhenus or Vahalis rivers into the calm waters of Lacus Flevo. The geography of the Low Countries has changed greatly since Roman times. Then Lacus Flevo was a smaller body of water than today’s Lake IJssel (IJsselmeer). Nowadays, IJsselmeer is a lake of 1,100 square kilometres (424.7 square miles) in the central Netherlands region bordering the provinces of Flevoland, North Holland and Friesland. It is quite shallow with an average depth of 5 to 6 metres (15 feet to 19 feet). The present IJsselmeer was created in 1932 when the Zuiderzee, an inland sea, was closed by a 32 kilometre (20 mile) long dam, as part of a major hydraulic engineering project. In Drusus’ time Lacus Flevo was about half the size of the modern IJsselmeer. Nevertheless, as the crow flies, the distance between Batavodurum and the passage out to the North Sea (Ostium Flevum) was around 230 kilometres (143 nautical miles). Travelling at 5 knots per hour the fleet could cover around 40 nautical miles per day, allowing for rest breaks and assuming no problems en route, and could reach Ostium Flevum in a little under four days. However, Drusus appears to have wanted to make contact with the local inhabitants of the region and that would have slowed the rate of advance. From his experience with the Batavi, he had learned that there was much to be gained by making an ally out of a would-be adversary. They could provide him men to supplement his forces, pilots to navigate the unfamiliar sea and translators to promote understanding. Furthermore, making for landfall at the end of each day would have also allowed the men and animals to rest and recuperate for the next leg of the voyage.

  On the western shore of Lacus Flevo lived a community called the Cananefates. “This is a tribe,” says Tacitus, “which inhabits part of the island, and closely resembles the Batavians in their origin, their language, and their courageous character, but is inferior in numbers”.47 Then as now, this region is noted for its sandy soil, which is suitable for bulbous vegetables. It gave the inhabitants their name, which meant the ‘leek growers’. Even today the area is famed for tulips.48

  On the eastern shore of the lake lived the Frisii nation. About them Tacitus writes that they are distinguished

  according to the relative strength of their divisions, into the Greater Frisians and the Lesser. Both divisions live beside the Rhine bank down to the ocean, and also around the margin of those vast lagoons along the coast which Roman ships have sailed.49

  With his charm and willingness to engage in diplomacy, Drusus “won over the Frisians” and signed a treaty with them.50 The choice of words suggests no blood was spilled during the encounter. Indeed, the good will generated by the initial meeting led to men of the Frisii serving with the Roman army from that time during this and other campaigns for which they were organised into their own auxiliary units.51

  Drusus’ army then proceeded on across the lake.52 The modern landscape around IJsselmeer is largely deforested but in Drusus’ time the land was densely covered with trees. Having seen them with his own eyes, naturalist Pliny the Elder vividly describes the p
roblem the high density of trees posed for military operations:

  The very shores are lined with oaks, which manifest an extraordinary eagerness to attain their growth: undermined by the waves or uprooted by the blasts, with their entwining roots they carry vast forests along with them, and, thus balanced, stand upright as they float along, while they spread afar their huge branches like the rigging of so many ships. Many is the time that these trees have struck our fleets with alarm, when the waves have driven them, almost purposely it would seem, against their prows as they stood at anchor in the night; and the men, destitute of all remedy and resource, have had to engage in a naval combat with a forest of trees!53

  Factoring in Drusus’ excursions to meet the Cananefates and Frisii and the need for the captains to navigate their ships through flotsam and jetsam so reducing the speed to below 5 knots, the journey to Ostium Flevum could have taken two weeks. That would take the campaign through to mid May or early June 12 BCE.

  Once out of the relative calm of Lacus Flevo, Drusus’ army sailed into the region now called the Wadden Sea. Today it is a channel that lies between the coast of northwestern continental Europe and the range of Frisian Islands, forming a shallow body of water with tidal flats, salt marshes and wetlands (plate 23). It stretches from Den Helder in the Netherlands in the southwest, past the great river estuaries of Germany to its northern boundary at Skallingen north of Esbjerg in Denmark. Over the millennia, erosion from waves and currents has changed the shape of the coastline in parts. In Drusus’ day, there may been have been fewer islands than today. Between Ostium Flevum and the estuary of the Amisia River was a journey of 94 nautical miles (150 kilometres). Nevertheless the relatively short distance was made difficult by the tides of the North Sea – particularly the area of German Bight – which were completely unfamiliar to the captains (navarchi) of the Roman fleet. They would need to quickly master the ebb and flow of the local tides to reach their destination safely.

  Drusus’ expeditionary force had met no resistance thus far but they knew that sooner or later they would. The geographer Strabo writes that Drusus “had subjugated, not only most of the tribes, but also the islands along the coast, among which is Burchanis, which he took by siege”.54 The identity of Burchanis is often interpreted to be Borkum, which is today the largest and westernmost of the East Frisian Islands in the North Sea. However, another contender is Bant, a large island which has since receded into the Wadden Sea. With their usual talent for naming places, the Romans nicknamed it Fabaria, meaning ‘Bean Island’, because of the wild beans (fabae) that grew there.55 Who opposed Drusus is not specified, though faced with several hundred warships, many equipped with artillery weapons mounted on turrets, resistance would not have lasted long.

  Advance into Germania Magna

  Arriving at the mouth of the Ems River (Ostium Amisium), part of the fleet continued to sail north along the coast. Tacitus’ account infers that the expedition was not exclusively military but had an exploratory dimension.56 The expedition may have been on a secret mission to circumnavigate the North Sea as far the Pillars of Hercules in the Caspian Sea or even beyond.57 Agrippa’s Orbis Terrarum unmistakably showed the Mare Caspium as a large bay along the northern shoreline of Asia. He did not know that there was no direct route to the Caspian Sea, the world’s largest lake, which is of course landlocked. Yet it seems they tried. There are tantalising references to the fleet having travelled far beyond the mouth of the Elbe River and reaching a place called the promontorium Cimbrorum (presumed to be Jutland) where the crews learned about, or were actually able to gaze out across, “an immense sea” which they believed extended to the lands of the Scythians.58 It was a milestone in Roman history. The crews may have had among their number philosophers of nature – Roman scientists studying astronomy, cosmology and the natural world – and mapmakers. The sources do not explicitly say one way or the other and even if they did their written reports and charts have not survived. However, the Romans were meticulous record keepers and their written observations may have been available to later commentators such as Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela. The expedition to seek out new lands and new peoples had to be abandoned, however, when halted by Nature herself: perhaps the ships were unsuited to the unpredictable currents of the Baltic Sea or North Sea or they were just prevented from going further by bad weather.59 Yet Drusus had made his mark: up to that time no Roman army had travelled so far north and that accolade was now his. His army of the eagles was the first – and probably the last – to do so.

  The rest of the fleet had meantime turned inland and berthed in the relative safety of what is now the Dorlar Estuary.60 The troops may have disembarked entirely or in part. Tough and fearless though the Romans were by reputation, their superstitious natures could sometimes get the better of them. When Iulius Caesar’s army arrived at the southern shore of Britannia in 55 BCE the legionaries would not at first disembark. Caesar describes the scene:

  And while our men were hesitating [whether they should advance to the shore], chiefly on account of the depth of the sea, he who carried the eagle of Legio X, after supplicating the gods that the matter might turn out favorably to the legion, exclaimed, “Leap, fellow soldiers, unless you wish to betray your eagle to the enemy. I, for my part, will perform my duty to the res publica and my commanding officer.” When he had said this with a loud voice, he leaped from the ship and proceeded to bear the eagle toward the enemy. Then our men, exhorting one another that so great a disgrace should not be incurred, all leaped from the ship. When those in the nearest vessels saw them, they speedily followed and approached the enemy.61

  It was a junior officer not Caesar who rallied his commilitiones. Drusus could similarly count on the courage of his officers in a difficult situation – men who would lead by example. The Wadden Sea shoreline had an alien character and under certain lights the land and sea can appear indistinguishable. As a soldier Pliny the Elder had witnessed the effect first hand. “In those climates,” wrote Pliny the Elder,

  a vast tract of land, invaded twice each day and night by the overflowing waves of the ocean, opens a question that is eternally proposed to us by Nature, whether these regions are to be looked upon as belonging to the land, or whether as forming a portion of the sea?62

  An acute observer of the natural world, Pliny was fascinated by this foreign landscape. It may have been a rainy day under a dark gun-metal sky when he first saw it: even today the coast can look unwelcoming when a cold wind blows off the sea. However, he only describes the marsh and wet-lands which were not protected by dykes in the first century CE, and does not comment on the islands with their Geest cores, sand bars and Geest ridges. His description tends to over dramatise the starkness of the coastline at the expense of an accurate description of it.63 Nevertheless, the shoreline may have unsettled some of Drusus troops as they disembarked.

  Onto this alien world, the Romans had landed. Without further delay, Drusus then “invaded the country of the Chauci,” the people who lived in the region now called Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen).64 “I myself have personally witnessed the condition of the Chauci,” wrote Pliny the Elder around 65 CE in his Natural History, “both the Greater and the Lesser, situated in the regions of the far North”.65 He portrays the Chauci as a people living a life barely above subsistence-level:

  Here a wretched race is found, inhabiting either the more elevated spots of land, or else eminences artificially constructed, and of a height to which they know by experience that the highest tides will never reach. Here they pitch their cabins; and when the waves cover the surrounding country far and wide, like so many mariners on board ship are they: when, again, the tide recedes, their condition is that of so many shipwrecked men, and around their cottages they pursue the fishes as they make their escape with the receding tide.66

  These artificial hilltop homes are called terpen and still found in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Zeeland. They rise to a height of 15 metres (24 feet) and the earliest ones have
been dated to 500 BCE. Some 1,200 terpen have been identified in Groningen and Friesland, but they are known to have also existed in Germany and Southern Denmark.67 They were a practical response by a community against frequent flooding, rather than an indicator of its poverty.

  The Roman writer insists that the Chauci lived a meager existence. Pliny observes

  It is not their lot, like the adjoining nations, to keep any flocks for sustenance by their milk, nor even to maintain a warfare with wild beasts, every shrub, even, being banished afar. With the sedge and the rushes of the marsh they make cords, and with these they weave the nets employed in the capture of the fish; they fashion the mud, too, with their hands, and drying it by the help of the winds more than of the sun, cook their food by its aid, and so warm their entrails, frozen as they are by the northern blasts; their only drink, too, is rainwater, which they collect in holes dug at the entrance of their abodes: and yet these nations, if this very day they were vanquished by the Roman people, would exclaim against being reduced to slavery! Be it so, then – Fortune is most kind to many, just when she means to punish them.68

  Pliny had seen it first hand, yet strangely this portrayal is not entirely borne out by the archaeological record either, since the Chauci are known to have raised cattle and supported cavalry-troops. Evidence from the earliest occupation levels excavated at Feddersen Wierde, a site just north of Bremerhaven in Niedersachsen, suggest a more sophisticated lifestyle. The settlement there consisted of five farmsteads of equal size, each comprising a long roofed building constructed of timber, sub-divided into space for people at one end and ninety-eight stalls for livestock at the other.69