The Great Illyrian Revolt

by Jason R Abdale

  In 14 AD, Caesar Augustus sent Germanicus into Germania to deal with Arminius and his rebels, ‘and was on the point of sending his son Tiberius to Illyricum to strengthen by peace the regions he had subjugated in war’.16 The war against Arminius and his German rebels lasted a lot longer than the war against the Illyrian rebels and was no less hard-fought. In 14 AD, while Rome’s war of revenge against the Germans entered its fourth year (and it wouldn’t end until two years later in 16 AD), Rome’s first emperor Caesar Augustus died. Tiberius Claudius Nero, who was about to depart for Illyricum to settle affairs there, was tasked with remaining within Rome and was crowned as the empire’s new monarch. Upon his coronation as Rome’s second emperor, he abandoned his birth name of Tiberius Claudius Nero and adopted the royal name Tiberius Julius Caesar.

  Right away, he had to deal with problems. Decades earlier, Augustus had made all of the soldiers in the army swear a personal oath of allegiance to him. He did this to prevent factionalism and civil war, with different legions taking sides with different would-be national leaders. That simple tactic had kept the Roman army in a reasonable state of obedience and cooperation. Now Caesar Augustus was dead, and the army was no longer legally under anyone’s control. Years of pent-up grumblings suddenly burst forth.

  That year, three legions had been posted to Pannonia under the overall command of General Quintus Junius Blaesus, the military commandant of Illyricum Inferius. He was a man who was not particularly noteworthy, aside from being an ex-consul. Following Augustus’ death, his men revolted at the harsh treatment they had had to endure for years. Paterculus comments that this mutiny could have easily morphed into a military coup d’état with the legions marching into Rome and declaring martial law. The mutiny spilled out from the army camps and into the civilian population, resulting in the town of Nauportus being ransacked along with several nearby villages. When word of all this reached the newly-crowned Emperor Tiberius, he sent his son Drusus Julius Caesar, nicknamed ‘Castor’, with some vague instructions to put a stop to all the disturbances. The emperor’s son was an odd choice to act as a negotiator between the imperial government and rampaging soldiers, since Drusus Castor was not a very likeable person. He was prone to excessive drinking and he had a violent temper; not a good combination. Nevertheless, accompanied by a troop of nobles as well as 1,000 men from the Praetorian Guard, he asked what the soldiers’ demands were so that he could present their case to the emperor and the Senate, provided that they stop their violence and act properly from then on. Later, Drusus and his staff quarrelled as to what ought to be done with the mutineers: pardon or punish? Being more inclined to bloodshed, Drusus stated that they would be punished. So he summoned the ringleaders to his tent, ostensibly for a conference, and had them all killed right then and there. This soon radically escalated into massacring every soldier who had taken part in the rebellion. A simultaneous mutiny in Germania was suppressed using means that were just as bloody.17

  Once these military revolts were put down, the Romans could once more focus on beating up the Germans. For the remainder of that year, and for two more years after that, the Romans attacked and harassed the Germans, but Arminius himself was never killed or captured. However, while Rome was still licking its wounds from its war in Illyria and while the legions marched against the German barbarians, another area of the empire grew shaky with unrest and rebellion: Africa. The northern African territories had long served as a major exporter of grain and olive oil for the empire. Quite simply, Rome could not survive without bread made from grain that was imported from what are now Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Then in the year 15 AD, while the war against Arminius and his German rebels was still under way, a Numidian warlord named Tacfarinas began causing trouble. This threat to Rome’s food supply was a much greater danger to the security of the empire than Arminius and his northern barbarians. Emperor Tiberius was forced to divert more and more troops and support to Africa in order to keep the supply lines safe from attack. Finally, he realized that he could not fight both the African rebels and the Germanic rebels at the same time; he had to choose. At the end of 16 AD, Tiberius stated that the Romans had inflicted enough damage upon the Germans in retaliation for Rome’s defeat at Teutoburg, and the troops could be pulled back to the Rhine. His nephew Germanicus, who was leading the legions in western Germania, strongly objected to this decision. He claimed that the Germans were on the brink of total defeat and that it would be incredibly stupid to give up and throw in the towel now, but Tiberius wouldn’t listen and ordered all Roman soldiers to pull back to their bases along the Rhine and Danube Rivers. All Roman territory located on the eastern side of the Rhine River was to be abandoned. The following year in 17 AD, Tiberius returned to Rome to celebrate his triumph against the Illyrian rebels that he had put off for so long. Emperor Tiberius’ son Drusus Castor was appointed as the new governor general of Illyricum Inferius, a post that he would hold for the next three years; he would be the last governor of a united Illyrian province.18 It would take Rome six more years to finally bring Tacfarinas and his North African rebel army to heel.

  Word of Tiberius’ triumph eventually reached the Black Sea, where the poet Ovid had been exiled. To commemorate the event, he wrote a poem in which he celebrated the news of Tiberius’ triumphal parade and he listed all of the various sights and attractions. According to Ovid’s verses, crowds of people packed the route to gaze upon the victorious general. Although Rome had experienced several days of heavy rain in the days leading up to the parade, on the date of the triumph itself the weather was fine and sunny. Garbed in embroidered clothes, Tiberius advanced along a path scattered with rose petals while men carried facsimiles of the Illyrian mountains and defeated strongholds, but the most eye-catching spectacle was the many Illyrian prisoners chained to each other by their necks, forced to trudge on in ignominious defeat. At the end of his route, Tiberius made sacrifices in one of the temples to the ancient heroes and to the memory of Caesar Augustus.19

  In either 19 or 20 AD, the two military zones of operation into which Illyricum had been divided following the Great Illyrian Revolt changed to being actual provinces. With this new development, the names changed again. Rather than keeping the awkward designations of Illyricum Superius and Illyricum Inferius, the Romans reverted to using the traditional names of Dalmatia and Pannonia, respectively.20 Tiberius did this, in all likelihood, to create a more intense level of government control over the people, more effective military defence with more troops stationed in the area so that they could quickly respond in force to local problems without having to relocate units from hundreds of miles away, and to prevent the Illyrians from uniting again into a single block entity. The northern city of Segestica, the birthplace of the Great Illyrian Revolt, was renamed ‘Siscia’, possibly to further blur the memory of the rebellion and to deprive the native Illyrians of an identifiable place of national resistance, and it was designated as Pannonia’s capital. The coastal city of Salona would serve as Dalmatia’s capital. Both provinces were in turn divided into districts called conventi (sing. conventus, shortened from conventus juridici) composed of several settlements each, and were centred upon a major town. Dalmatia was divided into three conventi, named the Conventus Scardonitanus, the Conventus Salonitanus and the Conventus Naronitanus, while Pannonia only had one, the Conventus Epidauritanus. Each settlement was assigned a certain number of decuriae who would act on behalf of their settlement in matters of government, essentially a municipal representative body like a city assembly.21

  One of the biggest problems during the opening stages of the Great Illyrian Revolt had been to get Roman troops quickly to the battlefield. As stated earlier, the first troops that were brought in to suppress the rebellion had to come all the way from central Bulgaria. Tiberius must have remembered the inherent problems in this. If rebellion should erupt in Illyricum in the future, he needed more soldiers on hand to be able to intercede quickly and not have to resort to hurriedly sending in men from more tha
n a hundred miles away. Therefore the historian Suetonius states ‘Tiberius safeguarded the country against banditry and local revolts by decreasing the distance between military posts.’22 The addition of more military garrisons, with each one spaced a short distance apart from the others, meant that the Roman troops could serve as quick-reaction forces in case trouble brewed again.

  However, forts need soldiers to man them and Illyria would be a place where the population could be recruited or press-ganged into military service. The Romans probably had a few reasons for doing this. Firstly, it was to refill the ranks that had suffered casualties during the various wars fought at this time. Secondly, it was a way for Rome to remove young men of fighting age from the region who might otherwise rekindle their rebellious spirit. Thirdly, it was a punishment. In terms of what the delectus, the conscription for military service, did to the population, we can’t say. Increasingly, the Balkan population was singled out to be drafted, and taking these young men away for upwards of fifteen years where they would be cut off from their homes was one way to quell any ideas that they might have had, as well as to serve as a punitive measure towards the Illyrians. Auxiliary units with Illyrian names appear during the latter part of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. There were eight auxiliary cohorts staffed by Breucians, seven cohorts staffed by Dalmatians, one cohort of Liburnians and one mixed cohort of Pannonians and Dalmatians.23

  However, forts rarely exist in isolation. Towns nearly always spring up around military posts because the people residing there supply goods and services to the soldiers. In addition to constructing new military posts, new settlements were also constructed in the region. These could have been homes for veterans, or they could have been settlements to create a higher Roman civilian presence in the area in order to overwhelm any more would-be native Illyrian rebels. Danijel Dzino states that in the years following the Great Illyrian Revolt, many of the urban coastal settlements on the Balkan side of the Adriatic had high numbers of Greek and Italian immigrants, and several of these settlements were in the process of being designated as either municipiae or coloniae, settlements for transplanted Roman citizens and subjects.24 In the ancient town of Emona, two inscriptions commemorating the construction of the town’s walls in the name of ‘the Divine Augustus and Tiberius’ were dated precisely to 20 March 15 AD.25

  Forts and towns need a transportation system to connect them. In 14 AD, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, the former Senatorial consul for the year 10 AD, became the military commandant of Illyricum Superius (Dalmatia), and would hold that post until the year 20 AD. Dolabella took it upon himself to modernize the province’s infrastructure, and so during his time in office he kept himself very busy. He instituted a programme of road-building within the coastal region of Dalmatia. Inscriptions known as the Tabulae Dolabellae have been found in Salona and can be dated to 16–20 AD. In the year 16 or 17 AD, two roads were constructed: the Via Gabiniana, which stretched from Salona to Andetrium, and the other one (whose name is not recorded) reached to the very border of the province. In 19–20 AD, three more roads were constructed in Dalmatia: one that reached from Salona to Fort Hedus (located within Daesidiate territory), another that connected Salona to the Bathinus River, and a third imum montem Ditionum Ulcirum, ‘to the valley of Mount Ulcirus of the Ditiones’ (modern-day Ilica, Bosnia). In addition to this, he also laid out permanent boundaries separating the territories of various townships within Illyricum and was responsible for the construction of many new forts and settlements such as the town of Emona. Finally, he commissioned a map to be made of his military zone, the Forma Dolabelliana. Military units patrolled the province and took note of the amount of real estate possessed by each community, and the sum of all this information was used to create the first truly accurate map of this region.26

  Pannonia was turned into a heavily-militarized frontier province, guarding Rome’s northern border from the Germans, Dacians and Sarmatians. By contrast, Dalmatia was an economic province, whose trading ports and abundance of mineral wealth were used to augment the imperial treasury. Following the Roman victory over the Illyrians, many of the old heavily-fortified hilltop settlments were abandoned and settlement on lower ground was favoured. These were places that could be easily accessible for trade and commerce. Economics, not defence, drove the creation and growth of these new settlements.27

  In order to ensure that peace would prevail in this region from now on, certain changes had to be made. This included the Illyrian tribes themselves. According to Pliny, the names of many of the Illyrian tribes continued to be used, but new names also began to appear in the ancient records. The Romans took it upon themselves to not only redraw tribal borders, but even to erase and rewrite tribal identity. Many of the tribes that had existed in this region legally ceased to exist with a few strokes of a pen. In terms of the particulars, the Scordisci Celts were split in half, forming the ‘Major Scordisci’ and the ‘Minor Scordisci’. The Breucian tribe was broken apart and several smaller ‘tribes’ were artificially created from it. Other tribes were combined together and were given a new name by their Roman masters to identify them. Most of these names were with reference to geographic place names to which the people had been forcibly relocated on Rome’s order. Among the new tribes, if that word can be used, that were artificially created by the Romans were the following:

  1.The Colapiani, who were named with reference to the Colapis River, now known as the Kupa River. They were formed by combining members of the Breuci along with the Osseriates and the Varciani.

  2.The Deraemestae, who were also an amalgam of numerous tribes that were lumped together and given a single name.

  3.The Docleates, who were named after their main settlement of Doclea. This tribe was also formed from numerous tribes that were combined together by the Romans.

  4.The Narensians (also known as the Narensi, Narensii or Narensioi), ‘the People of the Naro River’, was composed of several tribes who lived along the Naro River. According to Pliny the Elder, their territory was divided into 102 decuriae.

  5.The Tricornenses, ‘the People of Tricornum’, were named with reference to their main settlement (modern-day Ritopek, Serbia). This was a tribe that was artificially created by the Romans, comprising various Celtic and Thracian tribes who lived throughout Illyria. There were several Thracian tribes that lived within eastern Illyria, and there were Celtic tribes that were spread throughout Illyria from one end to the other. After the Great Illyrian Revolt ended, the Romans gathered these diverse people together and compelled all of them to live in one specific place for the purpose of observing and controlling them easily.

  The Romans were essentially telling these people: ‘This is who you are, this is where you live, this is where you call home, this is your culture, this is your history, and this is the name that you’re going to call yourselves from now on.’ There is something deeply disturbing about seeing this deliberate methodical step-by-step process of erasing old ethnic and tribal identities, making the tribes adopt new names, combining or splitting tribes to weaken them, relocating them away from their original lands and forcing them to live only within specific areas. As I was researching this particular aspect of ancient Roman policy within Illyria, I became struck by the realization that what the Romans were essentially doing here was making ancient versions of Indian reservations. All of this was done with the goal in mind of making the people’s heritage disappear. By forcing them to relocate to other areas, they were depriving the people of their traditional ancestral homelands that they could identify with as being the homes of their people for generations. By taking away their names and giving them new ones, the Romans were attempting to erase their tribal self-consciousness, forcing the people to identify themselves based upon the reservation that they lived on rather than by their true ethnic origins. By giving them geographic-based names rather than names grounded in their heritage, the Romans were manipulating the people, or rather the future generations of these people, into believing that they
had always lived in these places and didn’t have any kind of history beforehand. By taking large numbers of different tribes and combining them together, the Romans were further attempting to erode the complex history of ancient Illyria and to erase the histories and dynamic relationships of the numerous peoples that once lived in this area. By breaking up powerful tribes like the Scordisci and the Breucians into smaller units, the Romans were crippling the strength of these hitherto dominant groups. It was a chillingly modern method of imperialism.

  Epilogue

  Tiberius Claudius Nero, now known as Emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar, would rule for another twenty years. As the old general’s reign rolled on, Tiberius struggled with depression and indulged more and more in sexual perversion. The Roman upper classes grew to hate him due to his conduct as well as the conduct of his number two man, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, one of the most infamous names in Roman history. Tiberius lived as a recluse in his palatial estate on the island of Capri, preferring to let Sejanus do all his work for him. Sejanus became loathed and feared for his tyrannical treatment and the large number of executions that he ordered in Tiberius’ name. In 23 AD, Tiberius’ son Drusus Castor suddenly died. In 31 AD, Sejanus’ wife committed suicide and in her note, she stated that Sejanus and Drusus’ wife, with whom Sejanus was having an affair, had arranged for the murder of the emperor’s son. Tiberius immediately ordered Sejanus to be arrested and executed. Emperor Tiberius died six years later in 37 AD, with only a few people mourning him.

  Drusus Claudius Nero Germanicus, Emperor Tiberius’ nephew who had fought beside him in Illyria and Germania, was sent to the east where he came into conflict with Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, the governor of Syria. In 19 AD, Germanicus died under mysterious circumstances and rumours quickly spread that he had been assassinated. Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso was the main suspect in Germanicus’ murder, but some have hypothesized that none other than Tiberius himself arranged his nephew’s death. The emperor was never implicated but Piso was, and when it became clear that he was about to be convicted, Piso chose to commit suicide rather than face execution. Upon Tiberius’ death, with no surviving sons to take the throne, the emperor’s closest male relative and successor was Germanicus’ son Gaius, more popularly known by his nickname ‘Little Boots’: Caligula.