The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor Mommsen
guarded the frontier against the Dacians and Bastarnae. In what had hitherto been the province of Illyricum, a part of the legionaries was posted on the Kerka and the Cettina, to keep in check the still troublesome Dalmatians. The chief force was stationed in Pannonia, on what was then the boundary of the empire, the Save. This distribution of the legions and organisation of the provinces cannot be fixed with chronological precision; probably the serious wars which were waged simultaneously against the Pannonians and the Thracians, of which we have immediately to speak, led in the first instance to the institution of the governorship of Moesia, and it was not till some time later that the Dalmatian legions and those on the Save obtained commanders–in–chief of their own.
First Pannonian war of Tiberius.
As the expeditions against the Pannonians and the Germans were, as it were, a repetition of the Raetian campaign on a more extended scale, so the leaders, who were put at their head with the title of imperial legates, were the same—once more the two princes of the imperial house, Tiberius, who, in the place of Agrippa, took up the command in Illyricum, and Drusus, who went to the Rhine, both now no longer inexperienced youths, but men in the prime of their years, and well fitted to take in hand severe work.
Immediate pretexts for the waging of war in the region of the Danube were not wanting. Marauders from Pannonia, and even from the peaceful Noricum, carried pillage in the year 738[16.] as far as Istria. Two years thereafter the Illyrian provincials took up arms against their masters, and, although they returned to obedience without offering opposition when Agrippa took over the command in the autumn of 741[13.], yet immediately after his death the disturbances are alleged to have begun afresh. We cannot say how far these Roman accounts correspond to the truth; certainly the pushing forward of the Roman frontier, required by the general political situation, formed the real motive and aim of the war. As to the three campaigns of Tiberius in Pannonia from 742 to 744[12 to 10.] we are very imperfectly informed. Their result was stated by the government as the establishment of the Danube as the boundary for the province of Illyricum. That this river was thenceforth looked upon in its whole course as the boundary of Roman territory, is doubtless correct; but a subjugation in the proper sense, or even an occupation, of the whole of this wide domain by no means took place at that time. The chief resistance to Tiberius was offered by the tribes already at an earlier date declared Roman, especially by the Dalmatians; among those first effectively subdued at that time, the most noted was that of the Pannonian Breuci on the lower Save. The Roman armies, during these campaigns, probably did not cross the Drave, and did not in any case transfer their standing camp to the Danube. The region between the Save and Drave was at all events occupied, and the headquarters of the Illyrian northern army were transferred from Siscia on the Save to Poetovio (Pettau) on the middle Drave, while in the Norican region recently occupied the Roman garrisons reached as far as the Danube at Carnuntum (Petronell, near Vienna), at that time the last Norican town towards the east. The wide and vast region between the Drave and the Danube, which now forms western Hungary, was to all appearance at that time not even militarily occupied. This was in keeping with the whole plan of the offensive operations that were begun; the object sought was to be in touch with the Gallic army, and for the new imperial frontier in the north–east the natural base was not Buda, but Vienna.
Thracian war of Piso.
Complementary in some measure to this Pannonian expedition of Tiberius was that which was simultaneously undertaken against the Thracians by Lucius Piso, perhaps the first governor that Moesia had of its own. The two great neighbouring nations, the Illyrians and the Thracians, of whom we shall treat more fully in a subsequent chapter, stood alike at that time in need of subjugation. The tribes of inland Thrace showed themselves still more obstinate than the Illyrians, and far from subordinate to the kings set over them by Rome; in 738[16.] a Roman army had to advance thither and come to the help of the princes against the Bessi. If we had more exact accounts of the conflicts waged in the one quarter as in the other in the years 741 to 743[13 to 11.], the contemporary action of the Thracians and Illyrians would perhaps appear as concerted. Certain it is that the mass of the Thracian tribes south of the Haemus and presumably also those settled in Moesia took part in this national war, and that the resistance of the Thracians was not less obstinate than that of the Illyrians. It was for them at the same time a religious war; the shrine of Dionysos,6 taken from the Bessi and assigned to the Odrysian princes well disposed to Rome, was not forgotten; a priest of this Dionysos stood at the head of the insurrection, and it was directed in the first instance against those Odrysian princes. One of them was taken and put to death, the other was driven away; the insurgents, in part armed and disciplined after the Roman model, were victors in the first engagement over Piso, and penetrated as far as Macedonia and into the Thracian Chersonese; fears were entertained for Asia. Ultimately, however, Roman discipline gained the superiority over these brave opponents; in several campaigns Piso mastered the resistance, and the command of Moesia, instituted either already on this occasion or soon afterwards on “the Thracian shore,” broke up the connection of the Daco–Thracian peoples, by separating the tribes on the left bank of the Danube and their kinsmen south of the Haemus from each other, and permanently secured the Roman rule in the region of the lower Danube.
Attack of the Germans.
The Germans still more than the Pannonians and the Thracians gave the Romans occasion to feel that the existing state of things could not permanently continue. The boundary of the empire since Caesar’s time had been the Rhine from the lake of Constance to its mouth (iv. 258)[iv. 247.]. It was not a demarcation of peoples, for already of old in the north–east of Gaul the Celts had on various occasions mingled with Germans, the Treveri and Nervii would at least gladly have been Germans (iv. 244)[iv. 233.], and on the middle Rhine Caesar himself had provided settlements for the remnant of the hosts of Ariovistus—Triboci (in Alsace) Nemetes (about Spires), Vangiones (about Worms). Those Germans on the left of the Rhine indeed adhered more firmly to the Roman rule than the Celtic cantons, and it was not they that opened the gates of Gaul to their countrymen on the right bank. But these, long accustomed to predatory raids over the river and by no means forgetting the half successful attempts on several occasions to settle there, came unbidden. The only Germanic tribe beyond the Rhine, which already in Caesar’s time had separated from their countrymen and placed themselves under Roman protection, the Ubii, had to give way before the hatred of their exasperated kinsmen and to seek protection and new abodes on the Roman bank (716)[38.]; Agrippa, although personally present in Gaul, had not been able, amidst the pressure of the Sicilian war then impending, to help them otherwise, and had crossed the Rhine merely to effect their transference. From this settlement of theirs our Cologne subsequently grew up. Not merely were the Romans trading on the right bank of the Rhine subjected to various injuries by the Germans, so that even in 729[25.] an advance over the Rhine was executed, and Agrippa in 734[20.] had to expel from Gaul Germanic hordes that had come thither from the Rhine; but in 738[16.] the further bank was affected by a more general movement, which terminated in an invasion on a great scale.
Defeat of Lollius.
The Sugambri on the Ruhr took the lead, and with them their neighbours the Usipes on the north in the valley of the Lippe, and the Tencteri on the south; they attacked the Roman traders sojourning among them and nailed them to the cross, then crossed the Rhine, pillaged the Gallic cantons far and wide, and, when the governor of Germany sent the legate Marcus Lollius with the fifth legion against them, they first cut off its cavalry and then put the legion itself to disgraceful flight, on which occasion even its eagle fell into their hands. After all this they returned unassailed to their homes. This miscarriage of the Roman army, though not of importance in itself, was not to be despised in presence of the Germanic movement and even of the troublesome feeling in Gaul; Augustus himself went to the province attacked, and this occurrence may possibly have been the immediate occasion for the adoption of that great movement of offence, which, beginning with the Raetian war in 739[15.], led on to the campaigns of Tiberius in Illyricum and of Drusus in Germany.
German war of Drusus.
Nero Claudius Drusus, born in 716[38.] by Livia in the house of her new husband, afterwards Augustus, and loved and treated by the latter like a son—evil tongues said, as his son—the very image of manly beauty and of winning grace in converse, a brave soldier and an able general, a pronounced panegyrist, moreover, of the old republican system, and in every