The History of the Roman Empire: 27 B.C. – 180 A.D.. John Bagnell Bury
so it fell out. The days of Drusus were numbered. Somewhere between the Sala, a tributary of the Albis, and the Visurgis, he fell from his horse and broke his leg. The injury resulted in death after thirty days’ suffering; there seems to have been no competent surgeon in the army. The alarming news of the accident was soon carried to Augustus, who was then somewhere in Gaul. Tiberius, who was at Ticinum, was sent for with all haste, and with all haste he journeyed to the recesses of the German forest, and reached the camp in time to be with his brother in the last moments. The grief at this misfortune was universal; both the Emperor and the soldiers had lost their favorite, and the state an excellent general. Drusus was not yet thirty years old; he had accomplished a great deal, and he looked forward to accomplishing far more. Perhaps nothing will enable us so well to realize his importance in history, as the reflection that, if he had lived to fulfill his plan, his work could not have been easily undone, the event which are presently to be related could not have happened, and the history of central Europe would have been changed.
The corpse was carried to the winter-quarters on the Rhine and thence to Rome, where it was burned; the ashes were bestowed in the mausoleum of Augustus. Two funeral speeches were pronounced, one in the Forum by Tiberius, the other by Augustus himself in the Flaminian Circus. Besides these solemnities, more lasting honors were decreed to the dead hero. The name Germanicus was given to the conqueror of Germany, and to his children after him. A cenotaph was built at Moguntiacum, and a triumphal arch erected to record the founder of the new province. It would seem that Moguntiacum was in some special way associated with Drusus. These monuments in stone have not come down to us, but there has survived a monument in verse, an elegy addressed to his mother, the Empress Livia. We could wish that the author of theConsolatio A.D. Liviam had given a more distinct picture of the qualities of the young general whomh deplores.
SECT. II. — TIBERIUS IN GERMANY. THE PANNONIAN REVOLT
It now devolved upon Tiberius, who possessed the proconsular power and the title of imperator, to carry on his brother’s work. He took the place of Drusus as governor of the Three Gauls and commander of the armies on the Rhine, and maintained the Roman supremacy over the half-subdued German tribes between that river and the Albi. The pacification of the Sugambri was at length effected by strong measures, and they were assigned territory on the left bank of the Rhine. Each summer the Roman legions appeared in various parts of the new province; the Roman general dealt out justice, and Roman advocates appeared beyond the Rhine. There was still much to be done to place Germany on the level of other provinces: it would have been perhaps unsafe as yet to require the Germans to contribute auxilia, or to impose on them a regular tribute. Tiberius possessed the confidence of the army, but he did not, like Drusus, possess the affection of the Emperor. In 7 B.C., the year of his second consulship, he received triumphal honors; but he did not return to Germany, and in the following year he retired to Rhodes. Little is recorded of his successors, but it is not to be assured that they were idle or incompetent. The courtly writers of the day had eyes only for the exploits of Drusus and Tiberius, the princes of the imperial house. The consolidation of the conquests of Drusus was doubtless carried on amid frequent local rebellions, such as that in 1 B.C., which was put down by M. Vinicius. Another legatus, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, built a road, called the pontes longi, connecting the Amisia with the Rhine. These commanders, however, were not entrusted, like Drusus and Tiberius, with the government of the Three Gauls.
After the deaths of Gaius and Lucius Caesar, Tiberius was reconciled with his stepfather, and undertook the command of the armies on the Rhine once more. The legions were delighted to be commanded by a general whom they knew and trusted, whose ability was proved, and who was now marked out as the successor to the Empire. And there was need of a strong hand, for there had been many tokens of an unruly spirit. In his first campaign (4 A.D.) Tiberius advanced beyond the Visurgis, and reduced the Cherusci who had thrown off the Roman yoke; and for the first time the Roman army passed the winter beyond the Rhine in the fort of Aliso on the Luppia. In the following year (5 A.D.) the Lower Albis was reached, and an insurrection of the Chanci was suppressed. The Langobardi, who dwelled in these parts, and of whom we hear now for the first time—a people destined in a later age to rule in Italy and become famous under the name of “Lombards”—were also reduced. This expedition was carried out by the joint operations of a fleet and a land army. Tiberius repeated on a larger scale what Drusus had done eighteen years before. But while on the earlier occasion the Roman fleet had not advanced beyond the mouth of the Visurgis (if so far), under the auspices of Tiberius it reached the Albis and even sailed to the northern promontory of the Cimbric peninsula. Some peoples east of the Albis, such as the Semnones, the Charydes, and the Cimbri (in Denmark), sent envoys seeking the friendship of the Emperor and the Roman people.
The authority of Tiberius had thus pacified the trans-Rhenane dominion of Rome, and in the following year (6 A.D.) a new enterprise of conquest was entrusted to his conduct. When Drusus in his last expedition marched up the Moenus, he entered the land of the Marcomanni, and they, under the leadership of their chief Maroboduus, retreated before him into that lozenge-shaped, mountain-girt country in central Europe, which has derived its name Boiohemum, Bohemia, from the Celtic Boii who then inhabited it. The Marcomanni dispossessed the Celts, and Maroboduus established a powerful and united state, which extended its sway eastward, and northward over the neighboring German tribes. The ideas of this remarkable man were far in advance of his countrymen. He had a leaning to Roman civilization, and he was ready to learn from it the methods and uses of political organization. He formed and disciplined in Roman fashion an army of 70,000 foot and 4000 horse. But his policy was essentially one of peace. He desired to avoid a war with Rome, and yet to make it plain that he was quite strong enough to hold his own. He was willing to be a friendly ally, but he was not disposed to be a vassal. Geography, however, rendered a collision unavoidable. For Rome, possessing Germany in the north, and Noricum and Pannonia in the south, it would have been impossible to allow the permanent presence of an independent German state wedged in between these provinces. The actual occupation of the territory between the Dravus and the Danube, if it had not already taken place, was merely a question of time, and it was obviously necessary to have a continuous line of frontier from the Albis to the Danube. Policy demanded that the Empire should absorb the realm of Maroboduus, and advance to the river Marus (now the March, which flows into the Danube below Pressburg).
The legions of the Rhine under an experienced commander, Cn. Sentius Saturninus, advanced from the valley of the Moenus, breaking their way through the unknown depths of the Hercynian Forest, to meet the legions of Illyricum, which Tiberius led across the Danube at Carnuntum. Both armies together numbered twelve legions, nearly double of the troops mustered by Maroboduus; and under the command of a cautious and experienced leader like Tiberius the success of the enterprise seemed assured. But it was not to be. Before the armies met, sudden tidings of a most alarming kind imperatively recalled the general. A revolt, caused by oppressive taxation, had broken out in Dalmatia and Pannonia, and of so serious a nature that not only were the Illyric legions obliged to return, but the troops of Moesia and even forces from beyond the sea (probably from Syria) were required to assist in suppressing it. This would have been an excellent opportunity for Maroboduus to take the offensive, but he clung to his policy of neutrality, and accepted terms of peace which were proposed by Tiberius. The army of Sentius Saturninus hastened back to the Rhine to prevent a simultaneous outbreak there.
The Pannonian revolt lasted for three years, the Dalmatian for one year longer. In Dalmatia the leader of the insurgents was one Bato. He made an attempt to capture Salona, but was obliged to retire severely wounded, and had to content himself with ravaging the coast of Macedonia as far south as Apollonia. The legatus of Illyricum, M. Valerius Messalinus, son of the orator Messalla, extended against him with varying success. In Pannonia, another Bato, chief of the Breuci, was the most prominent leader. As the Dalmatian Bato failed to take Salons, so the Pannnnian Bato failed to take Sirmium, and was defeated before its walls by Aulus Caecina Severus, the legatus of Moesia, who had hurried to the scene of action. After this the two Batos seem to have joined forces and taken up a strong position on Mount Almas, close to Sirmium. Tiberius passed the winter in Siscia, and made that place the basis of his operations in Pannonia. As many as fifteen legions were ultimately collected in the rebellious provinces under his command, and the loyal princes of Thrace had also come to the rescue. An unusually large