IV

FLAVIAN WARS AND FRONTIERS

III.

AFRICA

Until Hadrian, no emperor chose to visit Africa in person or send thither a son or a colleague; and in the interval of confusion from the fall of Nero to the triumph of the Flavian cause the decision was fought out in other lands: all that the African provinces endured was a brief notoriety, rather than any serious disturbance or damage. Save for a few notices that might appear to concern geography rather than history, the literary record lapses again into silence. But that silence is no measure of the importance of Africa—in the fifty years that followed, these wide territories were the theatre of events, or rather of processes, without some consideration of which no study of imperial policy in its relation to native races and frontier defense could be other than defective and misleading.

In the trouble they gave to the Roman administration, the tribes of the desert itself could not be compared with those of the plateau of Numidia and the tangled mountains of Mauretania. Where the frontier faced the desert, it seems to have been most easily watched and most secure. In the year 70 the Garamantes had been persuaded to participate in the dissensions between Oea and Leptis, two of the cities of Tripolitania. Retribution was not long delayed. Though they hoped to baffle pursuit by covering up the wells as they fled, a Roman column penetrated their territory by a new route. Relations of friendship were now renewed, as can be inferred from the record of two distant expeditions preserved by Ptolemy the geographer. Septimius Flaccus who had come with troops to Garama advanced a three-months' journey beyond it into the land of the Ethiopians, and a certain Julius Maternus of Leptis, perhaps a merchant rather than a soldier, went even farther. Accompanied by the king of the Garamantes, he travelled for four months and came to Agisymba, “the assembling-place of the rhinoceros”, probably Lake Tchad.

North-east from the Garamantes and south and east of Leptis dwelt another desert tribe, the Nasamones, who revolted in 85 or 86, at a time when the Romans were hampered by serious embarrassments in another part of northern Africa, in Mauretania. The legate of the army of Numidia defeated them with great carnage, and Domitian was able to announce to the Senate that the Nasamones had ceased to exist. The cause of this disturbance is assigned to discontent with Roman fiscal methods, an assertion which naturally cannot be verified. Yet here as elsewhere the Romans may well have been seeking to restrict the independence and freedom of movement of a nomad tribe. However that may be, it is certain that by the early years of Trajan's reign there had been a considerable advance on the other side of the Shott-el-Djerid, to the south of the great mountain massif of the Aurès. This was the complement to the moving forward of the legion from Theveste to Lambaesis: and the result was the encirclement of the Aurès.

The Roman province of Africa remained quite small. The legion III Augusta, commanded by a legatus independent of the proconsul, seems to have been stationed at first at Ammaedara, some twenty miles north-east of Theveste, whither it was transferred early in the Flavian period. Of any kind of definite frontier in Africa it is still too early to speak: for the greater part of the century the zone of Roman control might be roughly represented by a line bending eastwards and southwards from the territory of Cirta to Ammaedara and from Ammaedara curving again by way of Thelepte to Capsa. There may have been here and there a few fortified posts, garrisoned by legionary detachments or auxiliary regiments: but in Africa as in Illyricum and elsewhere the Romans at first relied largely upon a method of maintaining peace which was more economical than an intensive military occupation or an organized system of frontier defense. Native tribes were left in the charge of their own chieftains or placed under the supervision of a Roman military official.

The Roman rule was often welcome to an agricultural population, to whom it brought protection from their enemies, the predatory pastoral tribes of the mountain and the steppe. The latter were regarded by the Romans as beyond the pale of civilization, and in the interests of peace it was necessary either to exterminate them or to compel them to change their habits. Because of seasonal variations, the pastoral peoples must wander over wide tracts in search of subsistence for their flocks and herds. The Romans required land for colonial foundations: it was won at the expense of the nomads, who were themselves compelled to resort to agriculture if they were to survive at all within their restricted limits. As the Romans in the Flavian period moved steadily forward south and west over the plateau of Numidia, the shepherd and the herdsman retired before the peasant, and a broad zone was redeemed for agriculture and for civilization. The Musulamii especially suffered for the benefit of colonies, imperial domains and private estates. Most conspicuous but not alone among the foundations of the Flavians may be mentioned the military colonies of Madauros and Ammaedara. The work proceeded apace. Nerva founded a colony at Sitifi in old Numidian land just inside the frontier of Mauretania, and Theveste received colonists from Trajan when the legion departed. The clearest indication of the extent of the advance that had been made in these years is revealed by Trajan's colony of Thamugadi, a long way to the west of Theveste and only twelve miles short of the legionary camp of Lambaesis. Thamugadi was founded in AD 100, and the legion III Augusta co-operated in the building. For this reason it would be preferable to date the transference of the legionary camp from Theveste to Lambaesis near the beginning rather than the end of the reign of Trajan.

When the legion was encamped at Ammaedara or Theveste, it covered the fertile territory of proconsular Africa behind it and kept watch over the Musulamii. Its transference to Lambaesis marked a momentous change. At Lambaesis the legion was within striking distance of the difficult country in the south-east of Mauretania: and it now became possible to construct a chain of forts to Zarai, thirty miles south of Sitifi, continuous (and perhaps contemporaneous) with the outer line of defense of that part of Mauretania. More important than this, Lambaesis, lying between the mountains of Batna in the west and the Aurès on the south-east, commanded the entrance to the defile of El Kantara leading south­wards to Biskra on the edge of the desert. The encirclement of the Aurès proceeded simultaneously from the other side: in the early years of Trajan a line of posts was erected between the Aurès and the Shotts running from east to west, from the station Ad Maiores to Biskra. In this way the Aurès was isolated. It was not, however, penetrated and occupied until a generation had elapsed. The completion of this process provided an admirable frontier on the south and west and enabled the provinces of Africa and Numidia to develop unhindered the prosperity which was one of the most imposing memorials of the Roman peace.

Mauretania was very different. Ever since the two Roman provinces of Caesariensis and Tingitana had been substituted for a native kingdom, unrest was endemic and recurrent. Numidia received an adequate frontier on the south, facing the Sahara. In Mauretania, however, the Roman power even at its greatest extension in the third century did not cover the wide plateau of southern Algeria: worse than that, there remained within the nominal limits of the province of Caesariensis many regions that were really unsubdued. The irregular and broken character of the land and the absence of natural lines of communication or of demarcation made it difficult for the Romans to draw a single and continuous frontier. In different parts of the country they were compelled to build both parallel and transverse chains of fortified posts for the purpose of isolating and controlling refractory regions like the mountains of Kabylia north of Sitifi. When the term frontier is applied to Mauretania it merely means the southernmost line of forts. In Hadrian's time, when the frontier of Mauretania was continuous with that of Numidia, it appears to have run from Zarai westwards between the mountains of Biban and those of the Hodna to Auzia and Rapidum, and thence to the valley of the Chelif. But beyond Oran the western frontier of Caesariensis is ill-defined.

It was separated from Tingitana by the mountains of the Riff, which throughout the centuries have maintained their independence of all empires down to the year 1925. The Romans who were able to subjugate regions like Asturia or Isauria left the Riff alone and did not even seek to isolate it effectively by penetrating into the interior behind it and securing a line of communications between Caesariensis and Tingitana. Even when, as not infrequently happened, the two provinces were placed under the charge of a single governor, he had to travel from the one to the other by sea; by land, there was no route, no common frontier. Tingitana itself was a tiny province with a coast-line running from Tangier to Rabat: it was shaped like a triangle with its base on the Atlantic and its apex at Fez. Though isolated from Caesariensis, Tingitana was close to Baetica: in the fourth century it is reckoned as one of the Spanish provinces.

Even in times of comparative peace Mauretania required a large army of occupation—larger than that of Numidia: there is adequate evidence of its presence. Besides the regular auxiliary regiments there was a dangerous abundance of native levies, serving under chieftains of their own such as the notorious Lusius Quietus. Although policy counseled a minimum of interference, peace and order could not always be guaranteed by these methods. A Mauretanian rising, like all African wars in any age, was an affair of years. Of these perennial disturbances, the best known is the war which exercised the government of Pius for at least six years and brought to Mauretania troops from many provinces. But it does not stand alone. Under Trajan and under Hadrian there was trouble in Mauretania: and it might have been expected that the emperors of the Flavian House with their conscious policy of consolidation and delimitation in the frontier provinces would have chosen to pay some attention to Mauretania even if they had not been compelled to.

The cause, extent and duration of Domitian's Mauretanian War are alike unknown. The presumption that such a war was neither brief nor easily terminated is an added difficulty in dating. At some time between 84 and 88, probably in 84—5, a certain Velius Rufus who held—or who had just been holding—the command of the urban cohort at Carthage led an expeditionary force drawn from the army of Numidia against rebel tribes in Mauretania: and both Caesariensis and Tingitana were put in charge of a senatorial governor, Sentius Caecilianus. To be successful, military operations in northern Africa demand the employment of many separate columns of troops. From the presence of an imperial legate and the analogy of the war of Pius it might be inferred that Velius Rufus' contingent was not the only reinforcement needed if Mauretania was to be pacified.

Spain is not usually reckoned among the frontier provinces of the Roman Empire. But even when the north-west of the peninsula had at last been subdued (19 BC), a large garrison remained in occupation. Though by the end of Nero's reign this had fallen to one legion, Vespasian did not contemplate any further reduction. After spending a few years in Upper Germany on its way back from Pannonia, the legion VII Gemina came to Spain and occupied the camp of Leon, well-placed to control the Cantabrians to the north and the Asturians to the west, and the already extensive network of roads that penetrated the wild Asturian land was amplified by the labours of the legionaries. The southern frontier of Spain lay across the sea in Mauretania: and the protection of Spain was one of the reasons that moved Augustus to plant a dozen military colonies on or near the coasts of Mauretania, without as well as within the pillars of Hercules. In any crisis of the Empire in later days the pirates of the unconquered Riff were a perennial menace to the security of the rich and peaceful province of Baetica.