The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
of the langue d'oui. Yet the Celts of Narbonensis did not forget their national gods; the religion of the country survived long in the south as well as in the north.
Tres Galliae. The three imperial provinces were often grouped together as the “three Gauls”. This threefold division corresponded in general outline to the ethnical division, which Caesar marks at the beginning of his “Gallic War”. But it does not correspond wholly. The province of the south-west contains Iberian Aquitania, but with a Celtic addition. The Celtic land between the Liger and the Garumna is taken from Celtica and annexed to Aquitania. The province Lugudunensis answers to Caesa’s Celtica, but it no longer includes all the Celts. It has lost some on the south side to Aquitania, and others on the north to the third division, Belgica. Thus Belgica is no longer entirely Teutonic, but partly Teutonic and partly Celtic. These three districts seem at first to have been placed under the single control of a military governor, who commanded the legions stationed on the Rhine and had a legatus in each province. Drusus held this position from 13 to 9 B.C., and Tiberius succeeded him (9-7 B.C.). Again, from 13 to 17 A.D. we find Germanicus holding the same position. It is possible that in the intervening years this military control was suspended, and that the legati of the three provinces were independent of any superior but the Emperor, as they certainly were after 17 A.D.
In imperial Gaul the Roman government allowed the cantons to remain, and ordered their administration accordingly. The city system was not introduced in these provinces as in Narbonensis, and the progress of Romanization was much slower. There was a strong national spirit; the religion of the Druids was firmly rooted; and it was long felt by Roman rulers that the presence of armies on the Rhine was as needful to prevent a rebellion in Gaul as to ward off a German invasion. But no serious attempt was made by the Celts to throw off the yoke of their Roman lords. An Iberian rebellion in Aquitania was easily suppressed by Messalla Corvinus (about 27 B.C.), and perhaps belongs as much to the history of Spain as to that of Gaul. The Iberians north of the Pyrenees were probably in communication with their brethren of the south. The success of Messalla was rewarded by a triumph.
The four visits of Augustus to Gaul, which have been mentioned above, and that of Agrippa in 19 B.C., show how much the thoughts of the Emperor were filled with the task of organizing the country which his father had conquered and had not time to shape. On the occasion of his first visit he held a census of Gaul, the first Roman census ever held there, in order to regulate the taxes. It is remarkable that the policy adopted by Rome was not to obliterate, but to preserve a national spirit. Not only was the canton organization preserved, but all the cantons of the three provinces were yoked together by a national constitution, quite distinct from the imperial administration, though under imperial patronage. It was in the consulship of M. Messalla Barbatus and P. Quirinius (12B.C.), on the first day of August, that Drusus dedicated an altar to Rome and the genius of Augustus beneath the hill of Lugudunum, where the priest of the three Gauls should henceforward sacrifice yearly, on the same day, to those deities. The priest was to be elected annually by those whom the cantons of the three provinces chose to represent them in a national concilium held at Lugudunum. Among the rights of this assembly were that of determining the distribution of the taxes, and that of lodging complaints against the acts of imperial officials.
The city which was thus chosen to be the meeting-place of the Gallic peoples under Roman auspices, Lugudunum, stood above and apart from the other communities of imperial Gaul. She gave her name to one of the three provinces, and the governor of Lugudunensis dwelt within her walls; but she was far more than a provincial residence. Singular by her privileged position as the one city in the three Gauls which enjoyed the rights of Roman citizenship she may be regarded as the capital of all three, yet not belonging to any. Her exalted position resembles that of Rome in Italy rather than that of Alexandria in Egypt; it has also been compared to that of Washington in the United States. She and Carthage were the only cities in the western subject-lands in which as in Rome herself a garrison was stationed. She had the right of coining imperial gold; and we cannot assert this of any other western city. Her position, rising at the meeting of the Rhone from the east and the Arar (Saône) from the north, was advantageous from the point of view either of a merchant or of a soldier. She was the centre of the road-system of Gaul, which was worked out by Agrippa; and whenever an Emperor visited his Gallic provinces, Lugudunum was naturally his head-quarters.
The difference in development between the Three Gauls and Narbonensis—the land of cantons and the land of cities—is well illustrated by the town-names of France. In Narbonensis the local names superseded for ever the tribal names; Arelate, Vienna, Valentia, survive in Arles, Vienne, Valence. But in imperial Gaul, the rule is that the local names fell into disuse, and the towns are called at the present day by the names of the old Gallic tribes. Lutetia, the city of the Parisii, is Paris; Durocortorum, the city of the Remi, isReims; Avaricum, the city of the Bituriges, is Bourges.
The conqueror of Gaul had shown the way to the conquest of Britain; but this work was reserved for another than his son. One of the objects of Augustus in visiting Gaul in 27 B.C. was to feel his way towards an invasion of the northern island; but the project was abandoned. The legions of Augustus, however, though they did not cross the channel, crossed the Rhine; but the story of the making of the true and original province of Germany beyond the Rhine and its brief duration, and of the forming of the spurious Germanies on the left bank of the river, will be told in another chapter.
SECT. III. — SPAIN
Spain, the land of the “far west” in the old world, was safe through its geographical position from the invasion of a foe. Almost enclosed by the sea, it had no frontier exposed to the menace of a foreign power; and it was the only province in such a situation that required the constant presence of a military force. For though the Romanizing of the southern and eastern parts had advanced with wonderful rapidity, the intractable peoples of the north-western regions refused to accept the yoke of the conqueror, and held out in the mountain fastnesses, from which they descended to plunder their southern neighbors. The Cantabrians and the Asturians were the most important of these warlike races, and, when Augustus founded the Empire, their territories could hardly be considered as yet really under the sway of Rome. Since the death of Caesar arms had never been laid down in Spain; commanders were ever winning triumphs there and ever having to begin anew. Augustus found it needful to keep no less than three legions in the country, one in Cantabria, two in Asturia; and the memory of the Asturian army still abides in the name Leon, the place where the legio VII gemina was stationed.
Before Augustus, the province of Hispania Ulterior took in the land of the Tagus and the Durius as well as the region of the Baetis. This division was now altered. First of all, Gallaecia, the north-western corner, was transferred from the Further to the Hither province, so that all the fighting in the disturbed districts of the north and north-west might devolve upon the same commander. The next step was the separation of Lusitania, and its organization as a distinct imperial province, while the rest of Further Spain,— Baetica as it came to be called—was placed under the control of the senate. Another change made by Augustus was the removal of the seat of government in Hither Spain from New Carthage to more northern and more central Tarraco, whence, from this time forth, the province was called Tarraconensis. Tarraco became in this province what Lugudunum was in Gaul, the chief seat of the worship of Rome and Augustus, and the meeting-place of the provincial concilium
Thus, under the new order of things, Spain consists of three provinces: Baetica, senatorial: Tarraconensis and Lusitania, imperial. This arrangement was probably not completed until the end of the Cantabrian war, which lasted with few interruptions from 29 to 25 B.C., only, however, to break out again a year or two later. A rebellion of Cantabria and Asturia was suppressed by Statilius Taurus in 29 B.C.; but in 27 B.C. disturbances were renewed and the Emperor himself hastened from Gaul to quell the insurrection. But a serious illness at Tarraco forced him to leave the conduct of the war to his legati, probably under the general direction of Agrippa. A fleet on the north coast supported the operations by land; and by degrees the fastnesses of the Cantabrians fell into the hands of the Romans. At the same time P. Carisius subdued the Asturians.
It was a more difficult task to secure a lasting pacification. Augustus endeavored to induce the mountain peoples to settle in the plains, where in the neighborhood of Roman colonies they