However, for the rest of Illyria, it seems that serious road construction took place after the Great Illyrian Revolt ended. We know of five Roman roads that were constructed within the province of Illyricum from 15 to 20 AD, well after the rebellion was crushed. Some roads, especially those connected to the city of Salona, are dated loosely to the early first century AD.13 I find it difficult to believe that a massive road network spanning the whole of Illyria was constructed within the six years between the birth of Christ to the outbreak of hostilities in the western Balkans. Therefore I must conclude that the majority of iconic Roman paved roads that were constructed in Illyria were laid down, at the earliest, in the final years of Caesar Augustus’ life. In fact, archaeology has shown that the vast majority of Roman roads constructed within this region were laid down during the third century.14
Yet these are just the famous paved cobblestone roads that we normally associate with travel in the ancient world. What about unpaved roads? Well, that is a very open-ended question, because there could have been many dirt roads criss-crossing the country connecting one settlement to another. Unlike the study of the cobblestone Roman roads, archaeology has a tough time trying to determine firstly if there was an unpaved road connecting one settlement to another, and secondly when such a road was developed. I say ‘developed’ instead of ‘constructed’ because dirt roads do indeed become developed over a prolonged period of time rather than being dug out in a single event. They start off as small footpaths winding their way through the land, then they develop into trails and then, after enough passage of people, waggons and livestock moving along them, they become roads. When did such pathways become roads? Who can say?
Looking at modern maps, it seems to me that Marcus Lepidus and his men may have marched eastwards along the course of the Sava River, moving from Segestica to the town of Sirmium. The Pannonians to the north had, for the most part, been defeated, with the small roving bands of rebel guerrillas being the exception. Two years earlier, the city of Sirmium had come under attack by rebel forces but Governor Aulus Caecina Severus managed to drive them off, though he suffered heavy losses later on at the Battle of the Dravus River. Having Marcus Lepidus march his men to Sirmium would reaffirm Roman control over the region, and it would definitely cut Illyria in half, splitting off Pannonia from Dalmatia and preventing any rebels from the south from infiltrating northwards to reawaken the Pannonians’ rebellious spirit.
Paterculus states that along his march, Lepidus’ force had to march through difficult terrain and repeatedly made contact with the enemy. Paterculus also states that the rebels ‘barred his way’, implying that they took up defensive positions in an attempt to stop or at least stall his advance. The historian concluded this part by saying that Lepidus managed to force his way through, inflicted heavy losses upon the rebels and utterly destroyed their lands.15
Paterculus does not state which tribes Marcus Lepidus and his troops encountered along their march. In order to determine this, we need to look at reconstructed maps and see which peoples were along Lepidus’ supposed route from Segestica to Sirmium.
The Breucians, whose territory lay at or near the Bosna River, occupied a large area but they had already been defeated the previous year. Marcus Lepidus might have taken his troops on a tour through Breucian lands just to make sure that they stayed pacified. The next tribe that Lepidus would have encountered would have been the Cornacates, who lay between the Breucians and the Scordisci. They were a small tribe with only one prominent settlement, Cornacum (modern-day Sotin, Croatia, loated on the Danube River to the south-east of the modern town of Vukovar). Cornacum probably had a wall or at least a fence built around it, since the settlement’s name stems from the Celtic word caion, meaning ‘enclosure’.16 Sometime during the first century AD, the Romans built a small fort here to house a battalion of auxiliaries. In 2009, excavations near here uncovered the remains of a Roman encampment, which was ringed by two V-shaped ditches.17 Could this be the remains of a camp that was erected by Marcus Lepidus during his march into the region in the year 8 AD?
The Cornacates likely didn’t give Marcus Lepidus and his legions much trouble since they were a minor tribe that only had one major settlement to their credit, but what was more daunting was the landscape. Their lands consisted mostly of boggy marshland, and Lepidus would have to take care that his men did not become entrapped. He must have been very conscious of what had happened to Severus and his soldiers the previous year at the Battle of the Volcaean Marshes, which likely took place not far from the location that Lepidus and his men were marching towards.
I imagine here a scene reminiscent of Germanicus’ return to the Teutoburg Forest years after the infamous disaster that laid low three legions in the Germanic wilderness. In the year 15 AD, during Rome’s revenge campaign against the Germanic rebels led by Arminius, Germanicus and his men returned to the old battlefield where Varus and many of his men lost their lives. In his account of this event Tacitus states that Germanicus and his troops discovered the bones of many men that had been chopped into pieces, lying scattered about everywhere exactly where the men had fallen, as well as fragments of weapons and the bones of war horses, and that the whole army was deeply filled with sorrow. They furthermore uncovered evidence of the Germans’ barbarity when they saw decapitated heads that had been nailed onto trees, as well as altars where the victorious Germans had subjected their Roman captives to ritualistic human sacrifice.18 Did Marcus Lepidus and his men visit the site of the old battlefield where Severus and his troops fought so bravely the year before? Did they discover any objects related to the battle, or perhaps uncover any human remains? The ancient sources do not make any mention of this, but as Lepidus and his men continued to march eastwards, I do not doubt that at some point they either arrived at the old battlefield or else passed very near to it. The memory of what had happened here must have been present in the minds of every soldier in that column, and it must have created a very ominous dark mood among the men.
After subjugating the Cornacates, which I imagine didn’t take very long, the troops may have crossed over the Sava River and entered the land of the Andizetes. This tribe lived between the Sava and Drava Rivers, and they needed to be got out of the way so that Lepidus’ troops could drive on further eastwards and still have their left flank protected.
After conquering the Andizetes, Lepidus likely continued to advance eastwards and his next target would have been the Amantini tribe. The Amantini had previously occupied a large part of this area, including the city of Sirmium, but as the Scordisci Celts grew in power and expanded into the region, they gradually pushed the native Illyrians out, reducing the Amantini to a population existing between the Sava and Danube Rivers and forcing them into a subjected status. There is also evidence that a small pocket population broke off and migrated southwards into the region of Epirus, establishing the town of Amantia; either that, or Amantia was a Greek settlement that just happened to have an Illyrian-sounding name.
The clearest evidence for a Roman attack upon the Amantini comes from the fourth-century historian Festus, who writes with regard to the fighting in the Great Illyrian Revolt: ‘After Batho [sic], King of the Pannonians, had been subdued, the Pannonians came under our sway. After the Amantians between the Save and Drave had been laid low, the area adjoining the Save and environs of Pannonia Secunda were obtained.’19 This, to me, is confirmation that following the general surrender of the Pannonians, the Amantini tribe was one of the tribes that were targeted by General Marcus Lepidus.
Now that Lepidus was confident that his left and rear were secure, he turned his army south to attack his most formidable target: the Scordisci. They were a large and powerful tribe whose western territory lay at the junction of the Sava and Danube Rivers, not far from Sirmium. The Scordisci, known to the Greeks that they occasionally fought against as the ‘Skordiskoi’, were one of several Celtic tribes that had abandoned their traditional lands to the north-west and had migrated into sou
theastern Europe. The Scordisci had migrated into the western Balkans sometime during the 200s BC. According to legend, following the Celtic invasion of Greece and their attack on the city of Delphi, the Celtic hordes left Greece, but afterwards they split up and different parties ventured off in search of new homes. One of these parties was led by a man named Bathanattos, and he and his party ventured into the land of the Illyrian Autariate tribe, which dwelled on the borders of Macedon. This Celtic band settled upon the slope of Mount Scordus, and thereupon took the name Scordisci, ‘the people of Scordus’.20 After establishing this initial outpost, the Scordisci gained more power and spread into the surrounding territory. They eventually became one of the major tribes in the region because they occupied a large portion of land and several of the neighbouring tribes were under their political domination, forced to acknowledge the Scordisci as their overlords and to pay regular tributes to them. Prominent settlements of the Scordisci included Singidunum (Belgrade, Serbia), Capedunum (possibly Banoštor, Serbia) and Viminacium (Kostolac, Serbia).21 Part of the reason why they gained so much power was due to them controlling a vital natural resource found in the area: silver. In the years between their establishment in the western Balkans and their subjugation by the Romans, the Scordisci controlled the silver mines located near the Drina River.22 In fact, their original home of Mount Scordus is now known as Shar-Dagh or ‘Silver Mountain’.23When the Romans became involved in affairs in the western Balkans, and especially after the area was conquered by them, the Romans made sure to take possession of Scordisci lands in order to control the silver supply.
As for their relationship with the Romans, the Scordisci Celts had a mixed relationship with them, sometimes fighting alongside the legions and other times fighting against them. From the middle of the second century BC onwards, the Scordisci and the Romans fought each other. The Romans sent a total of twelve expeditions to attack them. One notable episode took place in the year 83 BC, when Lucius Scipio inflicted a major defeat upon them and compelled them to relocate across the Danube. However, five years later, they returned.24 During Tiberius’ conquest of Pannonia in 12–9 BC, the Scordisci acted as his allies, attacking from the east while Tiberius and his men attacked from the west.
Since the accounts of the Great Illyrian Revolt state that Lepidus had to frequently fight against those who he encountered, I can assume that this time the Scordisci were in a hostile mood rather than a friendly one. Several secondary authors claim that the Scordisci Celts were finally defeated once and for all in the year 8 AD, so I can conclude that the Scordisci did, in fact, resist Marcus Lepidus’ advance with great tenacity and were finally crushed and forced to submit. Individual battles likely centred on the control of major settlements or strategic geographic locations. The ancient sources do not make any mention of Lepidus’ army laying siege to or assaulting the cities of Singidunum or Viminacium or indeed any settlements in the area, but Lepidus’ legions surely must have stormed some of them because Paterculus states that by the time Lepidus’ force rendezvoused with Tiberius’ force, Lepidus’ legionnaires were laden with captured plunder. You don’t get that from marching through farms and tiny villages, you get that from taking towns and cities. So Marcus Lepidus and his troops surely must have conducted at least one major assault against a rebel-held town or city. As to which one or ones he took, no one can say with any certainty.
This leads us to focus on Tiberius once again. If Tiberius was marching out of Italy, then he would be in Lepidus’ rear, with Lepidus far to the east in Sirmium. Therefore, in order for Lepidus and Tiberius to link up, Lepidus’ army would either have to about-face and march westwards back over the land that they had just devastated, or else possibly turn southwards and then wheel towards the west through more unconquered lands that he would have to fight through, essentially marching his army in a route shaped like a backwards C. I believe the second option. Paterculus states that Lepidus had to go through a lot of hard work to rendezvous with Tiberius’ forces, that Lepidus’ army was weighed down by plunder, and that he had to fight all the way through unconquered tribes and difficult terrain. If Lepidus merely retraced his steps and marched back where he came from, the journey homewards would be substantially easier; he would not have had to fight his way through the tribes a second time and he would not have had to struggle with the terrain as much since he now knew where the best routes would be. Therefore I believe that Lepidus, upon reaching Sirmium, turned his army southwards towards the traditional Pannonia-Dalmatia border and then marched westwards along this border region, conquering tribes that he met along the way.
Where was the rendezvous location? The sources don’t say. All that Paterculus says is that after struggling through the landscape and enduring constant enemy attacks and after inflicting massive amounts of death and destruction along his path, Lepidus ‘succeeded in reaching Caesar, rejoicing in victory and laden with booty’.25 That’s not much to go on. Was there a prearranged rendezvous point, or did the two forces move independently, gradually marching closer and closer towards each other, until they at last linked up at a random place? None of the sources say. If Tiberius was marching an army from Italy into Illyria, after he rounded the northern coast of the Adriatic, he would have been advancing from north-west to south-east. One hypothesis is that Tiberius arrived in Segestica and afterwards Marcus Lepidus and his men arrived on the scene. This is only one hypothesis, and there could be many other options that are equally valid such as Tiberius sailing across the Adriatic and landing in Salona and then fighting his way northwards. However, since the ancient accounts make no mention of any fighting on Tiberius’ part during this stage, this hypothesis seems implausible. Remember, Tiberius was getting more and more cautious as the years rolled on and he did not want to engage in battle when it wasn’t necessary. Furthermore, the war was draining and exhausting the empire’s manpower. Repeatedly, the government had been required to relocate units from elsewhere in the empire, leaving those areas without protection. When this didn’t work, they had called in the retired veterans, and when that didn’t work they were forced to press-gang civilians and even slaves into military service. Quite simply, the empire was beginning to run out of available manpower. Tiberius could not afford to suffer more casualties in one battle or siege after another. It would have been better to circumvent these obstacles rather than charging directly at them, despite the lure of plunder and battlefield glory. So, with due caution and precision, Tiberius moved his men around in a wide C-shaped arc until they got to where they had to go.
If we reconstruct Lepidus’ march of 8 AD, we can gauge that it was a horrendous ordeal. After leaving the security of Segestica at the beginning of summer, his men advanced south-east and then east along the course of the Sava River until he got to perhaps where the Sava and Bosna Rivers converge. From here, he would have marched his men overland north-eastwards towards the Danube, marching to what is now Vukovar. From this point, he would have proceeded along the Danube, making one detour in his march to take Sirmium and then continuing along his riverine march until he got to where the Sava joins the Danube. From here, he marched southwards through the land of the Scordisci Celts and then, along the foothills of the Dinaric Mountains, he made his return march westwards. He fought battles all along the way, smashing through armies and obstacles arrayed against him to block his path, crossing over the Drina River and making it to Brcko. Once again at the familiar flow of the Sava River, he would have followed it back to Segestica, where he would have presumably linked up with Tiberius’ troops.
When word of these struggles reached the Senate, it was decided that Tiberius should be given some of the honours of a triumph (he would have been given a triumph if Tiberius had led the Roman force himself), even though it was Lepidus and not Tiberius who led the Roman force.26 I imagine that Marcus Lepidus boiled at not being given the recognition that he felt he deserved, but if he did have such feelings it is likely that he kept them well hidden.
War in
Bato’s Backyard: Rome attacks the Daesidiates
Rome now turned its attention to the Perustae and Daesidiates. These two Dalmatian tribes were daunting opponents. According to Paterculus, their superb skills in warfare, their ferocious temper and, above all, their natural strongholds situated either atop mountains or in easily-defended narrow passes made them ‘almost unconquerable’.27 It wasn’t until these two tribes were ‘almost entirely exterminated’, 28 as Paterculus puts it, that Rome was finally able to suppress them.
The fighting during this stage of the campaign must have been especially horrendous. After all, this was Bato’s own tribe, and he was now fighting to defend his very own homeland. As such, he likely gave the Romans hell for every inch of ground that they gained. Tiberius remained cool-headed throughout these operations, as Paterculus records:
The Great Illyrian Revolt Page 25