Nothing in the course of this great war, nothing in the campaigns in Germany, came under my observation that was greater, or that aroused my admiration more, than these traits of its general; no chance of winning a victory ever seemed to him timely, which he would have to purchase by the sacrifice of his soldiers; the safest course was always regarded by him as the best; he consulted his conscience first and then his reputation, and, finally, the plans of the commander were never governed by the opinion of the army, but rather the army by the wisdom of its leader.29
Paterculus’ words, though flowery at first glance, hide some unpleasant truths. In his own words, he admits that Tiberius was having a hard time bringing Bato to heel. Tiberius was never able to get an opportunity to defeat his Illyrian adversary or any of his subordinate commanders without losing a lot of his own men in the process. Knowing this, Tiberius was extremely hesitant to take on the Illyrian rebels in direct head-to-head clashes. The Roman commander tried to find or make opportunities to whittle down the rebel strength in a series of easy victories, but nothing worked. Paterculus also hints that Tiberius’ troops were boiling for a fight. In fact, as you read the timelines of this entire war from beginning to end, it becomes increasingly clear that as the war went on, the legionnaires became all the keener to get it over and done with using whatever methods they could. As the war dragged on, the soldiers on both sides became more violent, more destructive and less concerned with morality. Tiberius was coming under a lot of pressure from his men to simply have at the rebels and destroy them all, but he knew that if he simply sent his soldiers forward against the well-entrenched enemy, they would be slaughtered.
It is here that I am reminded of the words of Major General James Wolfe, who fought against Montcalm in his campaign to take Quebec during the Seven Years’ War. In a letter that Wolfe wrote to his mother, he relates the following:
The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can’t in conscience put the whole army to risk. My antagonist has wisely shut himself up in inaccessible entrenchments, so that I can’t get at him without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to little purpose. The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a great number of bad soldiers and I am at the head of a small number of good ones, that wish for nothing so much as to fight him; but the wary old fellow avoids an action, doubtful of the behaviour of his army. People must be of the [military] profession to understand the disadvantages and difficulties we labour under, arising from the uncommon natural strength of the country.30
Such feelings and words would have been easily applicable to the present situation in which Tiberius found himself when he and his men invaded Bato’s home territory. Tiberius’ subordinate commanders were likely eager to attack and bring the war to a conclusion due to the accolades and the titles that would be bestowed upon them once victory had been won, and the legionnaires as well would have wanted the war finished as soon as possible due to all of the horrors and hardships that they had to endure. Remember that these men had borne the brunt of the fighting and the conflict had been especially savage. The men were becoming increasingly worried about the war continuing indefinitely, and were consumed with the thoughts of all of the other battles and sieges that they might have to face in the future if the war dragged on any longer. So many had already been killed and wounded, and the longer the war went on, the greater the likelihood that they themselves would either end up on a stretcher or in a grave. Tiberius, too, must have been eager to get this operation finished. The months were passing and winter would be coming on soon. If he couldn’t smash Bato’s mountaintop fortresses before the weather turned harsh, then Tiberius would have to retire his army to their winter quarters with the work still unfinished and delay siege operations until the following spring.
The Romans weren’t the only ones who were eager for a victory this year. The rebels were also likely anxious to smash the legions and have them limp away, or at least to keep them at a distance. The harvest was approaching and the Illyrians would need to get their crops in before the bite of winter. They remembered what the horrible winter of 6–7 AD had done. They did not want to see any more of their people starve to death. Therefore Bato needed to drive the Romans off as soon as possible so that his people could earnestly get to work bringing in the food from the fields.
As is the case so many times in wars like this, armies resort to general attrition when they cannot obtain specific primary objectives. We know from Cassius Dio that the Illyrians were suffering from a famine and starvation by the end of the year. However, not all of southern Europe shared this fate. In Italy the famine had ended, and Caesar Augustus celebrated the return of green growth by sponsoring games dedicated to his grandsons Germanicus and Claudius.31 As for the condition of the rest of southern Europe, there’s no information. However, I find it interesting that the historical sources say that while the famine had ended in Italy, it still persisted within Illyria. One hypothesis is that the Illyrian people were too busy fighting to tend to farming but this seems unlikely. Another hypothesis that might fill in the blanks is that Tiberius, being thwarted in his attacks against the fortified rebel positions, turned his men loose upon the countryside to destroy the rebel supply bases as well as to provoke the Illyrian rebels into abandoning their defensive positions and coming out into the open where they could be more easily destroyed. Once again, there is a parallel to the operation carried out by Tiberius against the Daesidiates with that of Wolfe’s campaign to take Quebec. When assaulting the Canadian city failed, Wolfe resorted to devastating the surrounding landscape. On 2 September 1759, Wolfe wrote the following:
At my first coming into the Country, I used all the Means in my Power, to engage the Canadians to lay down their Arms, by offers of such Protection & Security for themselves, their Property and Religion as was consistent with the known mildness of His Majesty’s Government. I found that good treatment had not the desired Effect, so that of late I have changed my Measures & laid waste the Country; partly to engage the Marquis de Montcalm to try the Event of a Battle to prevent the Ravage, And partly in Return for many Insults offer’d to our People by the Canadians, As well as the frequent Inhumanitys exercised upon our own Frontiers. It was necessary also to have some Prisoners as Hostages for their good Behaviour to our People in their Hands, whom I had reason to think they did not use very well. Major Dalling surprized [sic] the Guard of a village & brought in about 380 Prisoners, which I keep, not proposing any Exchange till the end of the Campaign. To the uncommon strength of the Country, the Enemy have added (for the Defence of the River) a great Number of Floating Batteries & Boats. By the vigilance of these, and the Indians round our different Posts, it has been impossible to execute anything by surprize. We have had almost daily skirmishes with these Savages, in which they are generally defeated. But not without Loss on our Side.32
Tiberius, too, might have made offers of peace to the Illyrian rebels, using promises and assurances of merciful treatment in order to induce the rebels to lay down their arms and submit. He had done the same thing in Germania years earlier on two occasions in order to get the hostile western Germanic tribes to submit to Rome. The historical records do not state whether or not Tiberius did indeed make overtures of peace to the Illyrians but if he did, then his entreaties failed because the Perustae and Daesidiate tribes resisted at every turn and Tiberius was forced to repeatedly confront them either in harrying the general population or in battle against the rebel forces. In the end, the Romans had done so much damage that both of these tribes were nearly wiped out entirely before the region could be deemed secure. Even so, Bato himself managed to escape.
Without large stores of food, these mountaintop strongholds would have had to rely upon regular shipments of food and supplies from outside. It would have been imperative to control the fertile wet valleys where much of the agriculture within the western Balkans took place. If Tiberius and his troops devastated the countryside, burning all of the area’s farmland in order to deprive the Illyrians of th
eir food supplies, then this would explain why the Illyrians were so desperate to eat whatever they could get their hands on, and it also explains why the campaign season of the following year was so abrupt.
On the Ropes
By the end of 8 AD, the Illyrian rebels began contemplating surrendering to the Romans because they were suffering greatly from famine and disease. In fact, they were becoming so desperate to find food, any food at all, that they were forced to eat plants that were toxic. Cassius Dio relates: ‘They were afflicted first by famine and then by disease that followed it, since they were using for food roots and strange herbs.’33 Imagine being so starved that you’ll eat poison ivy.
However, even though they felt that the war was rapidly going against them and were looking for any way to bring the conflict to an end, they did not make these intentions known to the Romans, believing that the Romans would never spare their lives for rebelling against the empire. One of the Illyrian war chiefs named Scenobarbus, of whom we know nothing other than his name, wished to switch sides and fight alongside the Romans against his countrymen. He even sent a letter to Manius Ennius, who Tiberius had made the commander of the garrison at Segestica, but soon became afraid that his plans would be discovered and he would be killed before he could undertake his scheme. He likely remembered what happened to Bato the Breucian when he crossed his colleague Bato the Daesidiate. Scenobarbus didn’t want to end up being publically beheaded as a collaborator and a traitor, so he changed his mind about joining the Romans.34
The Daesidiates, one of the major tribes that were involved in the Great Illyrian Revolt, had been conquered by the Romans just before winter set in. However, Bato was still alive and he had escaped every time that the Romans thought they had cornered him. With his flight also flew the prospect that this war could be brought to a conclusion that year. Tiberius, probably filled with dread at the thought of another year’s fighting in the treacherous mountains of the western Balkans, left for Rome to give Caesar Augustus a report in person of what had been accomplished in Illyria thus far. He also ordered his troops to their winter quarters to rest and resupply and to ready themselves for the next round of bloody battles that they would have to fight once spring came.
Chapter Six
The End of the Road
The Last Year
It was now the year 9 AD, which would prove to be a formative year not only for the fighting in Illyria but for the Roman Empire in general. Quintus Sulpicius Camerinus and Gaius Sabinus were elected as the consuls for that year. Tiberius returned to Rome and was greeted by Caesar Augustus himself on the outskirts of the city. Marcus Messallinus, the governor of Illyricum, was relieved of command and Augustus appointed the former Senatorial consul suffectus Gaius Vibius Postumus to take his place. A man named Lucius Apronius was made one of Postumus’ subordinates. Both men would conduct themselves very well during the last stages of the war and would earn the awards of a triumph.1
Publius Annius Florus writes in his Epitome:
Augustus entrusted the task of completely subjugating them [the Illyrians] to Vibius, who forced this savage people to dig the earth and to melt from its veins the gold, which this otherwise most stupid of peoples seeks with such zeal and diligence that you would think they were extracting it for their own purposes.2
Danijel Dzino states that the Romans were fully aware that the western Balkans possessed a vast wealth of mineral resources. During the reign of Caesar Augustus, mining operations in the area increased but they did not increase to a substantial level until the second century AD.3
The Assault on Splonum
While Tiberius was in Rome participating in the celebrations commemorating the victories of the previous year, his nephew Germanicus was still fighting. Early in the year, he and his men had seized possession of numerous rebel-controlled settlements within Dalmatia. Now, he turned his attention towards capturing the fortified rebel stronghold of Splonum, also called Splaunon. Cassius Dio describes the location as being naturally well-fortified and it was further strengthened by massive walls and had a large garrison of warriors to defend it. It is not clear where this fortified city was located; two possible contenders are Šipovo or possibly Plevlje, Bosnia.4
For a long time, Germanicus’ army assaulted the fortress with siege weapons (presumably battering-rams and catapults) and repeated assaults by his men, but the fortress held firm and its defenders repulsed all of the Roman attacks. No other details are given with regard to these events.5 What kinds of siege weapons did the Romans use during this time? Many of their weapons were copied from ancient Greek weapons, and others were modified based upon earlier Greek designs. The Romans had been making use of battering-rams for centuries. The earliest use of such a machine by the Romans may have been in 259 BC with the attack on Camarina, Sicily, using rams that had been loaned to the Roman army by the Greeks of Syracuse.6 Rams would be used by the Romans in many future city assaults.
At first, the Romans did not possess artillery. Artillery itself, mechanically-operated projectile-shooters, was invented sometime in the late fifth century or early fourth century BC, and were machines that shot arrows with great velocity. These early throwing machines were not the stuff of the common imagination with rocks and hundred-pound boulders flying through the air. The historian Livy states that artillery was used by Romans for the first time in 386 BC when a Roman army assaulted the Volscian town of Antium. However, this appears to have been a one-off, since the Romans preferred either passively besieging a settlement by surrounding it and starving it into submission or else storming the settlement with infantry charges. It is because of this that the testudo or ‘tortoise’ formation appeared when it did.7
It would not be until the second half of the first century BC that artillery would become a core component of the Roman army. Each legion had a certain number of ballistae – large crossbow-like machines that could launch arrows, javelins or rocks with a mighty punch – and by the time of Caesar Augustus, each legion was supposed to be accompanied by sixty ‘scorpion’ ballistae, one for each century of infantry. As to how often each of the legions possessed the full number of artillery is unknown. Many times, the legions themselves were significantly understrength, and it would not be improbable to assume that the numbers of artillery were reduced as well. The scorpion was a small portable mechanical arrow-shooter, and operated much more like a high-powered sniper rifle than a cannon.8
However, arrows or javelins, no matter how forcefully they are propelled, are useless against thick stone walls. When the time came to batter enemy fortifications, large-calibre artillery that was able to fling heavy round stones was brought into play. The ancient Greeks called such a weapon the lithobolos, ‘the stone-thrower’. Their range could be up to four hundred yards, depending upon the weight of the ammunition. The smallest projectiles could be about ten pounds, the same as an average-sized cannonball, while the largest stones could weigh as much as a hundred and fifty pounds and would have needed a large and cumbersome machine to launch them.9 The historical records do not state if Germanicus had any large-calibre ballistae in his army, but he may have had them accompanying his men as attachments in addition to the smaller scorpion ballistae that were incorporated into the legions.
Germanicus’ siege weapons had been employed against the walls of Splonum, but to little effect. Then Cassius Dio gives us something which I cannot believe to be true. A Germanic horseman named Pusio, who was fighting with Germanicus, picked up a stone and hurled it against the walls of Splonum, presumably in a fit of frustration. The wall crumbled, killing one of the wall’s defenders in the process. The whole rebel garrison became so afraid when this happened that they abandoned their defence of the wall and retreated into the citadel. Later, the Illyrian defenders surrendered both themselves and the fortress to Germanicus.10 The story of a single man simply picking up a rock and throwing it at the massive fortifications and causing them to crumble sounds very much like the story of David and Goliath, even though t
he similarities are almost surely coincidental. I highly doubt that chucking a stone at a giant fortified wall would cause it to fall, even after extensive pounding by battering-rams and artillery.
I believe that the siege actually went like this. A German horseman named Pusio, who was serving in Germanicus’ army, discovered that there was a weak spot in the wall. After telling his commander of his observation, Germanicus ordered all of his artillery to concentrate on that single section of the fortifications. In due time, the walls crumbled and the Romans advanced into the breach. The Illyrians realized that once the Romans were inside they could not effectively defend the walls, and so they retreated into the fortress’s central stronghold, the citadel. However, they were now pinned down inside this one location and had no hope of escape. They had two choices: resist to the last, taking as many Romans with them as they could, with the knowledge that the Romans would win the battle anyway, or they could surrender now and hopefully be spared. They chose to surrender.
Defeat at Raetinum
The Romans had taken Splonum after suffering many losses, but they had little time to celebrate or rest after such a hard-won victory. Germanicus marched his men to another rebel stronghold called Raetinum (possibly modern-day Golubic or Bihac, Bosnia11). This time, the battle would end in an horrific defeat for the Romans.
Based upon the evidence that Cassius Dio provides, Raetinum contained a central citadel with underground storerooms, and the whole town was surrounded by a wooden wall. The number of rebels defending this fortress is not provided, but the garrison must have been of substantial size. However, Cassius Dio clearly states that Germanicus’ legions greatly outnumbered the rebel defenders.12
The Great Illyrian Revolt Page 26