Legions of Rome (38 page)

15
BC
VI. CONQUERING RAETIA
Drusus and Tiberius combine

Raetia, situated between Gaul and Noricum, corresponds roughly with today’s Switzerland. The alpine Raeti tribe “were overrunning a large part of the territory of Gaul and carrying off plunder even from Italy.” [Dio,
LIV
, 22] They were even harassing
their allies, including the Vindelici of northern Italy, and Romans who traveled though their territory, killing males and making women their captives, even killing babies in the womb if they deduced, by a form of divination, that the unborn babies were male. These activities were “what was to be expected of nations which had not accepted peace,” said Dio. [Ibid.]

In 15
BC
, therefore, Augustus gave Tiberius and Drusus the task of bringing the Raetians into line. The brothers were very different in style. While Tiberius was a cautious commander who let others do the front-line work, Drusus took part in the fighting alongside his troops and would personally “chase German chieftains across the battlefield, at great risk to his life.” [Suet.,
V
, 1]

The Raetians were “strong in number and fiercely warlike,” according to Velleius. [Velle.,
II, XCV
] Characteristically, 23-year-old Drusus was the first to engage them, leading a force that routed a contingent of Raetians near Tridentum, today’s city of Trent. The Raetians withdrew from Italy, but continued to raid Gaul, so Augustus then sent both his stepsons, from different directions at the same time, into Raetia against them.

Both Roman generals divided their armies into several columns which invaded Raetia via separate routes. Twenty-seven-year-old Tiberius, who had seen service in the Cantabrian War in Spain as a teenager, used ships to cross Lake Garda, near Lake Como, catching the tribesmen by surprise. [Dio,
LIV
, 22] As many as twelve legions, involving some 60,000 legionaries, took part in these large-scale Raetian operations. Numismatic evidence suggests that the units involved included the 13th Gemina, 16th Gallica and 21st Rapax, and probably also the 17th, 18th and 19th legions. Units based in Illyricum at this time, the 11th, 15th Apollinaris and 20th, are likely to have also taken part.

Intriguingly, while it may be coincidental, the policy cited by Dr. Lawrence Keppie whereby legions numbered 11 and above were traditionally posted to this part of the Roman world during the late republican era, seems also to have applied to the postings of Augustus during this period. [Kepp.,
MRA
, 2] Likewise, no legion
numbered over 10 is known to have been used by Augustus in the recently completed Cantabrian War in Spain, further endorsing the Keppie formula, whereby only legions numbered 10 and under were used in Spain during the late republican era. [
See page 226
.]

The Raeti, though numerous, were forced to divide their forces to combat the various Roman incursions, and divided, they were conquered. The natives were “easily overwhelmed,” said Dio. [Dio,
LIV
, 22] The Roman forces also defeated Raetian allies, the Vindelici. This was all accomplished, said Velleius, after the legions stormed many towns and strongholds and fought several pitched battles in the open. While there was much bloodshed among legions’ opponents, there was “more danger than real loss to the Roman army.” [Velle.,
II, XCV
]

Many thousands of tribesmen were captured. Because the Raeti had a large population, the strongest male captives of military age were deported. Those who were left behind were numerous enough to populate the country “but too few to begin a revolution,” said Dio. [Dio,
LIV
, 22] In a single campaigning season, Tiberius and Drusus had defeated the two tribes and extended Roman rule into the alps.

9
BC
VII. AT THE ALTAR OF PEACE
A dedication, and a funeral

“When I returned from Spain and Gaul,” Augustus wrote, “after successful operations in those provinces, the Senate voted the consecration of an altar to Pax Augusta [the Augustan Peace] in the Campus Martius in honor of my return.” That had been in 14
BC
. [
Res Gest
.,
II
, 12]

It took five years to create the
Ara Pacis Augustae
, the Altar to the Augustan Peace. It was formally dedicated on Rome’s Field of Mars on January 30, 9
BC
. The altar’s marble panels show the entire imperial family attending the ceremony. Two months later, following the lustration ceremonies which preceded the year’s campaigning season, Drusus and Tiberius rode off to launch their latest military ventures. For Tiberius, it would be a brief campaign in Pannonia. More ambitiously, 29-year-old Drusus, one of the consuls for the year, led fifteen legions deep into Germany.

Confronted by the Chatti and the Suebi, and “defeating the forces that attacked
him only after considerable bloodshed,” Drusus marched his legions through the homelands of the Cherusci tribe, crossed the Weser river, and reached the Elbe, “pillaging everything on his way.” [Dio,
LV
, 1]

At the height of the summer, Drusus’ army was withdrawing toward the Rhine when the young general was thrown from his horse. It seems that Drusus sustained a broken limb, after which gangrene set in. As his army neared the Rhine, Drusus became too ill to be moved. News of his deteriorating condition reached Tiberius in northern Italy, and he rode all the way to the Rhine, crossed it, and after a journey of 400 miles (640 kilometers) found the army still inside Germany with his brother near death. Thirty days after Drusus’ fall, he died in Tiberius’ arms.

Tiberius walked in front of his brother’s cortège all the way to Rome. Legion tribunes and centurions carried the bier as far as the Rhine, then leading men of every city the cortège passed through took turns as pallbearers. At Rome, Drusus’ body was laid in state in the Forum. Tiberius delivered one funeral oration there, Augustus another in the Circus Flaminius. [Suet.,
III
, 1]

The body was then borne to the Field of Mars. There, in sight of the Altar of Peace, whose dedication Drusus had attended only months before, the popular young prince of Rome was cremated. His remains were deposited in Augustus’ own circular mausoleum. It would be another twenty-two years before Augustus joined him.

AD
6–9
VIII. THE PANNONIAN WAR
Four testing years

In the summer of
AD
6, the Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia ran with blood.

The Roman subjugation of the Balkans had been completed by Augustus in 14
BC
, with the regions of Pannonia and Dalmatia annexed to Rome. These new provinces covered parts of modern Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. In
AD
5, Augustus’ stepson Tiberius withdrew troops then garrisoned in Dalmatia and Pannonia and levied a number of Dalmatian auxiliaries, who joined him on the Danube for a campaign in Germany. Rebellions had broken out in Pannonia several times in past years, with many locals never entirely accepting Roman overlordship. The departure of the troops left a much reduced Roman military presence. In their absence, revolt flared in Pannonia and Dalmatia under two unrelated leaders, both named Bato, and a third native commander, Pennes.

Velleius Paterculus, who served as a Roman commander in this war, wrote that the revolt began in the north with the Pannonians, who brought the Dalmatians into the conflict as their allies. Velleius estimated that there were 800,000 native people in the two provinces, and that of these the rebel leadership would eventually arm 200,000 foot soldiers and 9,000 cavalry. In the north, the Breuci tribe elected their Bato as the chief Pannonian general; his army set its sights on marching on Italy. Pennes took a second Pannonian army east into Rome’s province of Macedonia and began plundering. [Velle.,
HR
,
II, CX
, 1–6]

In the south, Bato of Desidiatia initially led a small band of rebels which struck their first blow for the Dalmatians that summer: “Roman citizens were overpowered, traders were massacred, a large vexillation of auxiliaries, stationed in the region which was most remote from the commander, was massacred to a man.” This success
encouraged many more Dalmatians to join the uprising. In the overall rebel war strategy, the Dalmatian army would have the task of defending their own territories, while the Pannonians took the war to Rome elsewhere. [Ibid.]

Cassius Dio, writing two centuries later, said that the governor of Dalmatia, Marcus Valerius Messalinus, had gone to the Rhine to participate in Tiberius’ latest German campaign. [Dio,
LV
, 29] But Velleius Paterculus, who was a participant in this war, wrote that Messalinus had remained in Dalmatia, and, “at the outbreak of the rebellion, finding himself surrounded by the army of the enemy and supported by only the 20th Legion, and that at half its strength” (because half of its cohorts were serving with Tiberius in Germany) “he routed and put to flight more than twenty thousand, and for this was honored with Triumphal Decorations” by Augustus. [Velle.,
II, CXII
, 1]

Pannonian rebels laid siege to Sirmium, modern Sremska Mitrovica, not far from present-day Belgrade, a strategically placed city that controlled the Sava Valley. According to Dio—in a story not verified by Velleius—Caecina Severus, governor of the adjacent province of Moesia, quickly marched west with Roman troops, met Bato the Breucian and his troops near the Drava river and defeated them in a stinging battle, taking heavy casualties himself. News of Dacian and Sarmatian raids into Moesia then caused Severus to withdraw to deal with that threat. [Dio,
LV
, 29] In the south, said Dio, the Dalmatian Bato attacked Salonae, near Split on the Adriatic coast. Salonae resisted the attack, and Bato himself received a head wound from a sling stone, but his troops overran other Roman communities all the way down the coast to Apollonia in Greece. [Ibid.]

With much of the Adriatic coast opposite Italy in rebel hands, there was uproar in Rome. “Such a panic did this war inspire,” said Velleius, who was in Rome at the time, “that even the courage of Caesar Augustus, made steady and firm by experience in so many wars, was shaken by fear.” That fear was of an invasion of Italy. [Velle.,
II, CX
, 6] Augustus, who told the Senate that “the enemy might appear in sight of Rome within ten days,” sent urgently to Tiberius to abort his German campaign and march for the Balkans with five legions. [Ibid.,
CXI
, 2]

Augustus also summoned five legions from the East, while at the capital he ordered mass mobilization. From throughout Italy all legion veterans were recalled from retirement to serve behind their Evocati standards. New troops were levied, and wealthy citizens were required to supply many of their freedmen servants to be equipped as soldiers. [Ibid.]

As for Velleius, who was around age 30 at this point: “I was now, at the end of my service with the cavalry, quaestor designate.” Velleius, “even though not yet a senator,” was immediately made an imperial legate by Augustus, the equivalent of a modern-day brigadier, and put in charge of the non-citizen recruits raised in this scramble to arms at Rome. The overall command of this force of Evocati and non-citizen troops was given to Augustus’ grandson, Germanicus Julius Caesar. Just 21 years of age, Germanicus, the son of Drusus Caesar, Tiberius’ late lamented brother, had already impressed Augustus as a young man of ability.

Led by Germanicus and Velleius, the mixed force marched with all speed from Rome for the Balkans. The fact that the much admired Germanicus was in charge of this motley force had a calming effect on the people of Rome. Meanwhile, from the Danube, Tiberius marched into Pannonia to Siscia, today’s Sisak, near Zagreb, with his five legions—apparently the 8th Augusta, 9th Hispana, 14th Gemina Martia Victrix, 15th Apollinaris and the remaining cohorts of the 20th Legion. At Siscia, Tiberius linked up with local commander Messalinus, and with Germanicus and Velleius from Rome.

“What armies of the enemy did we see drawn up for battle in that first year!” Velleius was to recall. Tiberius, with his combined force vastly outnumbered by the rebels, decided to play for time until the five legions arrived from the East. Tiberius, considered by Augustus the “bravest of men” and “the most conscientious commander alive,” actively evaded an all-out battle, instead harassing smaller enemy columns and blockading rebel supply routes. [Suet.,
III
, 21]

The fact that a large Roman army was in Pannonia was enough to prevent the Pannonians from going through with their plan to march on Italy. To do so would have put Roman troops at their backs.

In the new year, two Roman generals of consular rank marched into Pannonia: Aulus Caecina, who had more than twenty years’ experience as a soldier, and Silvanus Plautius, who had arrived from the East. They
came with their five legions, of which only the 7th Legion, which had been in Galatia up to this point, can be identified with some certainty, and were accompanied by a large number of allied troops including Thracian cavalry led by King Rhoemetacles of Thrace. The two Batos, learning of the approach of this Roman column, hurried toward it with their combined armies.

At the Volcae Marshes, west of Mitrovica in the Sava Valley, the rebels surrounded and attacked the camp of the five legions. When the Roman commanders led the legions, auxiliaries and cavalry out to fight, the rebels closed with the Thracian cavalry. “The king’s horsemen were routed,” said Velleius, and “the cavalry of the allies put to flight.” Auxiliary cohorts turned and ran, “and the panic extended even to the standards of the legions.” It was “a disaster that came near being fatal.” [Velle.,
HR
,
II, CXII
, 5–6]