Rome
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In AD 175, Avidius Cassius, the leading commander under Lucius Verus during the Parthian War, and afterwards effective plenipotentiary for the whole of the East, rose in revolt. Marcus Aurelius had never visited the East. Lucius Verus had earned only opprobrium. The region had been devastated by plague. It had also been drained of tribute and manpower to defend the West against the Germans. Avidius Cassius found a mass base in both the army and the eastern elite for his challenge. In fact, the revolt collapsed after three months when its leader was assassinated by a centurion. Even so, the legitimate regime had received a shock, and Marcus spent a year touring the East, purging the army and administration of rebels, rallying loyalist support, and presenting himself as ‘Saviour of the West’ and ‘Beneficent Conciliator of the East’. To strengthen the dynasty, his teenage son Commodus was first made consul, then styled Augustus and granted tribunician power, and finally, in AD 177–178, advanced to formal equality with his father as co-emperor. The political situation stabilized – for the moment. But an old fissure had reopened. If a fracturing of the Roman imperial aristocracy on regional lines was a recurring feature of Late Antique politics, the greatest fracture line of all, and the one along which the empire would eventually divide for good, was that between East and West. It had been there in the struggles between Caesar and Pompey, Octavian and Antony, Vespasian and Vitellius. The revolt of Avidius Cassius was not on this scale – but it was the dress rehearsal for a major struggle 20 years later.
The Antonine regime survived the coup of AD 175 because the imperial elite remained broadly united behind Marcus Aurelius. By the time of his death in AD 180, not only was the East resettled, but the German War effectively won. His son and successor, eager to escape the inconveniences of frontier life and return to the pleasures of the capital, quickly imposed a settlement. The Germans, drained by the violence, were ready to make peace on Roman terms. Deserters and prisoners were to be returned, contingents of mercenaries supplied, and an annual corn tithe paid. War on Rome’s allies was banned, partial disarmament imposed, and the time and place of tribal assemblies regulated. In return for accepting this client status, all Roman garrisons were to be withdrawn from German territory, and Roman subsidies would be paid to native rulers. Again, as in the East, the policy was not to conquer but to pacify; not, that is, to risk overextending Roman lines, but to liquidate military threats and restore the old frontiers. Marcus Aurelius had done his work well: the Rhine-Danube line was destined to hold, more or less, for two generations.
The son was a striking contrast to the father. Returning in haste to Rome, he sacked old ministers, promoted favourites, showered the mob with handouts, and indulged his personal fascination with the games. Commodus had himself portrayed as the Greek hero Hercules. The emperor appeared in person in the Roman arena. Gladiators were included among his courtiers. Not for a century had Rome seen such rampant faction and corruption at court, and nowadays, in a more army-dominated empire, less tolerance was granted to playboy emperors. The reign of Commodus was punctuated by plots and purges, the first, involving the emperor’s sister, as early as AD 182. The tension inside the palace reflected the fears of courtiers subject to a mentally unstable master whose favour was whimsical and unpredictable – not least because Commodus’s instinctive response to waning popularity was to sack and execute a leading minister. Within five years of his succession, Commodus faced a major military revolt. The commanders of the British and Danubian legions sent troops to Rome to overthrow the government of the Praetorian Prefect Tigidius Perennis. Commodus, true to form, abandoned Perennis to his fate, allowing him to be outlawed by the Senate and then lynched by a detachment of soldiers.
Because on this occasion the emperor himself survived and the soldiers returned to their frontier bases, factional politics quickly revived. Isolated from the governing class by a wall of contempt and hostility, Commodus turned to those outside it. Finally, in AD 187, a freedman called Cleander from Phrygia in Asia Minor, formerly the emperor’s Chamberlain, was made Praetorian Prefect. The appointment broke the monopoly over this office of the equestrian order. Cleander, moreover, used his position to enrich himself and his entourage by selling magistracies, governorships, honours, legal decisions, and anything else in the gift of government. There were no less than 25 consulships awarded in a single year. Freedmen became senators. The whole finely graded Roman imperial system of rank and privilege was threatened. For a time, terror kept the lid on opposition in the capital, but growing disorders in the provinces gave urgency to the crisis of leadership. Border wars erupted in Dacia, Germany, Mauretania and, above all, Britain, where military mutinies increased the threat to frontier security. Meantime, deep within the empire the rising burdens of the military monarchy provoked popular revolt.
Around AD 187 an army deserter-turned-bandit called Maternus spread ‘insecurity throughout Gaul and Spain’. Details are minimal. The xrevolt is described as a ‘war of deserters’ which involved ‘countless numbers plaguing Gaul’. This looks like a serious outbreak of peasant revolt, in which army deserters reinforced endemic social banditry, and the two fused with wider rural discontent to mobilize large numbers and create a mass resistance movement. Were this not the case, it is unlikely that the classical writers would have recorded the event at all. They report, moreover, that large-scale military operations were required to suppress the rebels, and that before this could be done, Maternus had marched towards Rome with the explicit intention of assassinating Commodus and replacing him as emperor. In the event, Maternus was betrayed, captured and beheaded, and his movement dissolved back into the countryside from which it had emerged. But the rising was a measure of growing stress within imperial society. There would be many more like it in Late Antiquity.
Meantime, increasingly insecure, Commodus became megalomaniac and murderous. Contemporary inscriptions show him claiming a ludicrous list of names and titles: Lucius (his personal name), Aelius (Hadrian’s family name), Aurelius (Marcus’s family name), Commodus (another personal name and the one by which we know him), Augustus (emperor), Herculeus (reincarnation of Hercules), Romanus (embodiment of Rome), Exsuperantissimus (supreme being), Amazonius (conqueror of the Amazons), Invictus (unconquered), Felix (blessed by the gods with good fortune), and Pius (faithful and dutiful). The months of the year were to be renamed in the emperor’s honour. Rome was hence-forward to be called Colonia Commodiana. The emperor’s features now graced the old Colossus of Nero. Coins announced a new golden age of peace and prosperity (felicitas saeculi). Or they referred to the loyalty (fides) and unity (concordia) of the army under the leadership of His Highness the Supreme Being (summus exsuperantissimus). In December AD 192 the emperor appeared in the arena in the guise of Hercules and slew a large number of wild beasts. He then announced that he would appear before the Roman people on New Year’s Day as both consul and gladiator. He missed the appointment. Terrified by his lunacy – that it would destroy them all – Commodus was assassinated by his closest courtiers. A bizarre alliance of equestrian prefect, freedman-chamberlain, pro-Christian concubine and professional wrestler organized to strangle the emperor in his bath-tub.
The Praetorian Prefect Laetus then offered the throne to an elderly senator with a distinguished record of imperial service. Pertinax was duly acclaimed by the Guard and formally empowered by the Senate. But he afterwards paid the soldiers only half their promised donative, and, when faced with mutiny in consequence, executed some rebels on the evidence of a slave. Laetus then led a second attempt against the emperor: a detachment of soldiers entered the palace, and Pertinax, who had reigned for just three months, was cut down by a member of his own German bodyguard. The Praetorian Guard were then in control of the capital, and their only interest lay in maximizing the amount they could extort for their services. The empire was put up for auction at the Praetorian Barracks. The price reached 6,250 denarii per man, and the matching offer of Marcus Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, was preferred over that of his rival, sin
ce the latter was Pertinax’s father-in-law, who, it was feared, might seek vengeance for his relative’s murder. The Guard carried Julianus to the Senate and secured ratification of their decision.
The Guard was less successful, however, in its attempts to disperse the large numbers of demonstrators who then besieged the palace. The new regime’s opponents passed a resolution calling on Pescennius Niger, the Governor of Syria, to intervene in defence of constitutional government. Around the same time, Septimius Severus, Governor of Upper Pannonia, called on his troops to avenge the murder of Pertinax and punish the arrogance of the Guard; he was immediately acclaimed emperor. Clodius Albinus, the Governor of Britain, meanwhile, was acclaimed by the legions in Britain. The Roman Empire faced a second ‘Year of Four Emperors’. It had shattered in an instant into regional fragments, the rule of Julianus and the Guard in Rome contested by rival usurpers representing, respectively, the Eastern, the Danubian and the British legions. The high command and officer corps of each army group viewed its rivals with suspicion and jealousy; each faction was determined to win the empire for itself, lest it be uncoupled from the gravy train of promotion and largesse; each, too, found wider support among local landowners and city authorities, eager to ensure that revenues and soldiers were not siphoned away to fight distant wars. As in AD 69, a corrupt regime and a military coup had destroyed the legitimacy of central government, opening a contest for power which revealed the hidden fracture-lines cutting across the empire.
Severus had the advantage of a central position. He was also cunning, ruthless and decisive. He secured his right flank by bribing Albinus with the title of Caesar and the prospect of eventual succession. He then force-marched his army across the Alps into northern Italy, capturing Ravenna and its fleet. Julianus attempted to improvise a defence of Rome, but late payment of their donative and the prospect of a clash with the Danubian legions drained the Praetorians’ enthusiasm for war. Severus offered the guardsmen their lives if they handed over the murderers of Pertinax and stood themselves down. The Guard took their chance: Severus was proclaimed emperor, and Julianus was outlawed and murdered in his palace. Severus was then formally invested with imperial power by a delegation of 100 senators at a meeting outside Rome – the visitors having first been searched for hidden weapons, the emperor receiving them surrounded by 600 bodyguards. Severus then approached the city. The Praetorians were paraded without arms, demobilized, and exiled beyond 160 km from Rome. A new Guard was recruited from frontier legionaries. The Senate was conciliated: Severus justified his actions as the avenger of Pertinax; he promised to rule according to the principles of Marcus Aurelius and not to execute any senators; two of his daughters were married to the two senators nominated for the consulship the following year. He appealed, too, for the good favour of the People, with handouts, games, and a care for the bread-supply. There was a civil war going on: Severus needed all the friends he could get; above all, he needed a secure capital before turning to confront his main enemy: Pescennius Niger.
The eastern legions were no match for the Danubians in a straight fight, but Niger enjoyed widespread support in the East, and his strategy was a sensible one of proactive defence. His appeal to the officers, officials and client-rulers of the eastern provinces was compelling: local resources for local defence; Italy, the Danube, the Rhineland, distant Britain, these were foreign countries. The East he turned into a fortress, establishing two strong lines of defence, one at the Straits, the second at the passes into Syria over the Taurus Mountains. Severus forced the first line by seizing the city of Perinthus, crossing the Hellespont, and capturing Cyzicus on the far side. He then pushed inland and defeated Niger again at Nicaea, at which point the eastern forces fell back on their second line. Three battles in AD 193 thus gave Severus control of Asia Minor. The following year he turned Niger’s defence of the mountain passes, crossed into Syria, and won the fourth, and decisive, battle of the campaign at Issus. Niger himself was run down and killed by Severan cavalry. His head was displayed at Byzantium – gateway to the East and still holding out under siege – for the edification of its defenders. The victor remained a further year in the East. Cities that had supported Niger – especially Antioch – were devastated, plundered, and permanently reduced in status. Those that had supported Severus were promoted to colonies and given construction subsidies. The property of Niger’s supporters was confiscated and added to the imperial estate. Recalcitrant local tribes were suppressed. Formal peace was made with Parthia. Only in the winter of AD 194–195 did Severus finally head west, returning to Europe after completing his eastern campaign by capturing – and devastating – Byzantium.
Victory gave confidence to the new regime. Caracalla, Severus’s eight-year-old son, was made Caesar, displacing Albinus, whose support was dispensable after the destruction of Niger. Seeking legitimacy, the dynasty now claimed descent from Marcus Aurelius; and who, in the circumstances, would see fit to deny it? Emperor-worship replaced the cult of the standards in the legions. Severus’s Syrian wife was honoured as Mater Augusti (Mother of Emperors) and Mater Castrorum (Mother of the Military Camps); soon it would emerge that she was actually a goddess, Juno Caelestis, Juno of the Heavens, no less, a Romanized version of the ancient Punic Tanit who was worshipped in Severus’s native North Africa. The emperor and his family were being elevated into gods on earth; the imperial cult was assuming central ideological significance; older concepts like the Senate and People of Rome were being supplanted. The military monarchy was acquiring a religious form.
Albinus, the former ally now redundant, was recast as usurper and outlaw. But he, like Niger in the East, had a strong base of support among the officers and landowners of the north-west provinces, and his supporters promptly reiterated their acclamation of him as emperor. But Albinus was fighting against the odds. Though he crossed the Channel with the bulk of the British army, he won only modest support from the legions on the Continent; notably, the great army-bases on the Rhine stood aloof. Even so, nothing was certain in the shifting sands of civil war. Severus had problems in his rear: rumours of disloyalty demanded a flying visit to Rome, a studied display of magnanimity, and a fresh dole-out to the mob. And when the campaign was resumed and battle finally joined outside Lyons on 19 February AD 197, matters were long in the balance. Severus led his men into a trap – a minefield of concealed pits harbouring sharpened stakes – and was himself at one point in grave danger when thrown from his horse. The battle lasted through the day, and the casualty list was horrendous. But the British legions finally broke and ran, and as they did so, battle turned to massacre. Albinus himself was trapped in a building and committed suicide. The body was brought to Severus – who ‘feasted his eyes on it’ according to the historian Dio Cassius. The head was cut off and sent for display in Rome. The rest of the corpse was trampled and degraded before being tipped into the Rhône, along with the bodies of Albinus’s murdered wife and sons. Lyons, meantime, suffering the fate of Antioch and Byzantium, was put to the sack. Severus’s police agents then fanned out across Gaul, Spain and Britain to track down and destroy the broken remnants of Albinus’s party. Thus did the Roman imperial elite – which prided itself on bringing civilization to the world – conduct its private feuds.
Severus, master of the world, commander of its most powerful army, could now dispense with the niceties of diplomacy and law. The military dictatorship, which had been ashamed to speak its name for two centuries, now openly declared itself. The spirit of the age would be encapsulated by Severus many years later in oft-quoted deathbed advice to his sons: ‘Live at peace with one another, enrich the soldiers, and despise everyone else.’(3) A united dynasty and a loyal army: these were now the very essence of Rome – and certainly all that was necessary to power. The rest existed only as the servants and suppliers of the all-powerful state. The Senate, once courted and honoured, was cowed into obedience with a purge of former supporters of Niger and Albinus: 64 members were brought to trial, and 29 condemned to dea
th and loss of estates. The purged Senate was then neutered, losing its power to propose legislation and appoint magistrates. The legal fiction of a ‘restored Republic’ was finally dissolved. As the Senatorial Order sank – its members even lost their immunity from torture in treason cases – the inexorable rise of the Equestrian continued. New provinces and legions were now commanded by equestrians instead of senators. The Praetorian Prefect became a high court judge, the head of the civil service, and the emperor’s overall deputy. The old state treasury (aerarium) was downgraded into the city finance department for Rome, and an enlarged imperial treasury (fiscus) henceforward received the revenues from both imperial and senatorial provinces, and from the emperor’s private estates. The streamlining of the dictatorship involved a stripping away of its Republican crust.
The army, meantime, was purged, enlarged and reformed. Just 25 legions strong at the end of Augustus’s reign, Marcus had raised it to 30, and now Severus increased it again to 33. One legion was stationed at Albanum a mere 32 km from Rome: reinforcements if needed for the reconstituted Praetorian Guard, the Urban Cohorts, and the Nightwatchmen stationed in the city. Within the army, aristocratic privilege, a barrier to talent and efficiency, was further broken down. The Praetorian Guard was now recruited from across the army, becoming a kind of officer training corps, from which men promoted from the ranks might eventually graduate as centurions. The status of junior officers was elevated, as centurions, previously always commoners, were sometimes promoted to equestrian rank, making them eligible in due course for further promotion to tribune or prefect. Terms improved also for the rank and file. Pay was increased – from 375 denarii for legionaries and 1,250 for guardsmen to 500 and 1,700 respectively. Legionaries were granted the right to marry during service, so that the offspring of relationships with native women would have Roman citizen status. Veterans’ privileges were extended to include, for instance, a lifetime’s immunity from personal service in their native towns after retirement. Amenities were improved at army bases – in North Britain, under Severus and his immediate successors, inscriptions record new or reconstructed barrack-blocks, bath-houses and aqueducts, as well as drill-halls, armouries, headquarters-buildings and granaries. It was not quite a new model army, but it was an army thoroughly reformed and rededicated to the service of the emperor.