IV

FLAVIAN WARS AND FRONTIERS

V. 

THE ADVANCE IN GERMANY

The disturbances which the crisis of the year 69 had called forth did not long survive the triumph of the Flavian cause. The ignominious collapse of the Imperium Galliarum, was followed, not without serious fighting, by the termination of the Batavian War in the late autumn of AD 70. What the system of defense on the Lower Rhine now required was repair and re-organization: and so the composition, but not the size or function of the army was modified. The repentant Batavians returned to their old allegiance on the old terms. The Frisii, as before, were accessible to Roman influence. It was not intended, here or elsewhere, that the power of Rome should stop short at the frontier which she had chosen and fortified: and it might further be conjectured that the Tencteri and the Usipi, whose lands extended along the right bank of the Rhine from the Ruhr to the Lahn, showed themselves amen­able.

Drastic measures were taken against the Bructeri, a confederation, who dwelt to the north of the Tencteri between the Lippe and the Ems. They had embraced the enterprises of Civilis with alacrity and with effect—the veneration in which their priestess Veleda was widely held was a powerful force on the side of the insurgents. Whether the Romans had dispatched punitive expedi­tions beyond the Rhine immediately after the end of the Batavian War is not known, but at some time in the years 75—78 Rutilius Gallicus defeated the Bructeri and secured the person of Veleda. This did not reduce them to acquiescence. At a later date (which cannot more closely be determined) another governor of Lower Germany, Vestricius Spurinna, entered the territory of the Bructeri, and by the mere threat of war compelled them to take back a king whom they had driven out. It may be to another aspect of the same incident that Tacitus is referring when he describes how in the presence of a Roman army and without the shedding of Roman blood, sixty thousand of the Bructeri were massacred by a coalition of the neighboring peoples. It is evident that imperial policy had been pursuing its traditional methods with skill and with economy.

The line of the Rhine was guarded as before, but more firmly. Hitherto the forts occupied by the auxilia had been built of earth, strengthened with timber. A line of stone forts was now constructed, garrisoned by a new series of regiments, drawn from other provinces. Four new legions were brought to Lower Germany: and their camps too were built in stone. A new position, Noviomagus (Nymwegen), watching the island of the Batavians, was chosen for a legion and garrisoned by X Gemina: and the old double camp of Vetera was replaced by a stone fortress for one legion, XXII Primigenia. The other two legions, VI Victrix and XXI Rapax, occupied Novaesium and Bonna.

The army of Upper Germany likewise numbered four legions. I Adiutrix and XIV Gemina built for themselves a new stone fortress at Moguntiacum. Argentorate was occupied by VIII Augusta, Vindonissa by XI Claudia. But the forts of the auxiliary regiments southwards from Mainz at least were not rebuilt in stone. These positions were soon abandoned and the garrisons were transferred to the right bank of the Rhine.

The history of the advance of the Roman frontier in Germany beyond the Rhine and the Danube cannot be recovered, even in outline, from the fragments that have survived of literary records. The details of the Roman military occupation beyond the Rhine have been won and co-ordinated by the thorough and continuous archaeological investigation of the last fifty years. The evidence consists of inscriptions, stamped tiles of legions and auxiliary regiments, coins and pottery and, not least, the forts themselves, by reason of their situation and structure. This evidence varies enormously in extent and character from region to region: sometimes abundant and convergent, as in the Wetterau, sometimes scanty, as on the line of the Neckar and in the Raetian. History will not always be the loser if it prefers a generously wide margin to a date that is delusively definite.

So much for the methods of study. It remains to summarize the results. Across the Rhine from Moguntiacum the Mattiaci between the Taunus and the mouth of the Main appear to have remained in amicable dependence ever since the days of Augustus down to AD 69, when they yielded to the temptation of attacking Moguntiacum in alliance with the Chatti and the Usipi. After this brief interlude they returned to their allegiance. New forts of earth were established in this territory at Wiesbaden (Aquae Mattiacae) and at Hofheim, a few miles farther east. Southwards from Moguntiacum after a brief occupation such as is attested at Rheingonheim in the Palatinate opposite the old Neckar, the auxiliary regiments south of Mainz were transferred early in the reign of Vespasian from the left to the right bank of the Rhine. For Rheingonheim, which had probably housed a garrison of two regiments, were substituted forts at Ladenburg (Lopodunum) and at Neuenheim, on the Lower Neckar near Heidelberg. To the north, between the Neckar and the Main, forts may have been established at Gross Gerau and Gernsheim, but there is no sufficient evidence: south of the Neckar, however, Baden-Baden was occupied, but the sites of most of the other new forts, like their predecessors on the left bank of the Rhine, are still a matter for conjecture.

In the extreme south-west of Germany, however, in the angle between the Upper Rhine and the sources of the Danube, the Roman advance is attested by more definite evidence and presents more decisive features. Across the Schwarzwald a road was constructed, running south-eastwards up the valley of the Kinzig to Rottweil (Arae Flaviae), and thence continued to the bank of the Danube near Tuttlingen or Laiz. In this way Rottweil was reached from the direction of the legionary camp of Argentorate. The advance had probably been a converging one, for another road came to Rottweil from the south, from Vindonissa by way of Schleitheim and Hufingen. On the line of the road across the Schwarzwald forts were built at Offenburg, Waldmossingen and Rottweil: and it was further protected by posts at Sulz to the north and at Geislingen to the east.

The military operations of which this modest advance was the permanent but perhaps not the only result may be dated to the years 73-4. The governor of Upper Germany, Cn. Pinarius Cornelius Clemens, received the ornamenta triumphalia and two senators who held in succession the command over the auxiliary forces were also decorated. Moreover, a fifth legion appears at this time to have been attached to the army of Upper Germany. None the less, despite this imposing array, despite the decorations for service in the field, the campaign may have been more a display than an exertion of force. Numbers of troops would be needed, not merely to overawe opposition, but to provide the labor for roads and forts. In all the wide expanse of territory bounded by the Rhine and the Danube and extending north-eastwards to the lands of the Chatti and the Hermunduri there does not appear to have been a single large and formidable fighting tribe: the population—by no means as scanty as ancient accounts have been taken to imply—was mixed in origin, the relic of wars and migrations, and predominantly Celtic in civilization.

This region does not enter into the history of the Augustan wars of conquest, and subsequently a strong and organized system of defense would have been superfluous. A reason for the advance will perhaps be discovered in the need for a shorter route of communication between the armies of the Rhine and the Danube—and thence, ultimately, an economy in troops. How far Vespasian intended the advance in southern Germany to proceed is unknown—before the end of his reign, several of the Raetian forts may have been transferred to the northern bank of the Danube. Be that as it may, the intervention of Domitian was vigorous and eventful.