CHAPTER IX

THE ANTONINES

III.

THE PARTHIAN WAR

Even on his deathbed Antoninus was visited by anxieties about the kings that had aroused his anger, and before he died troops were already marching to the Eastern Front. Few knew precisely how things stood on the frontiers. The coin-legends are of the ‘joy of the people’, the ‘happiness of the time’, of hilaritas, when the twin-princes were born, of carefree ‘security’. The ‘providence of the gods’ guided the Empire, and its peoples rejoiced in the harmony of its rulers. Marcus devoted himself wholly to philosophy and sought to win the affection of the citizens. But the felicity of the hour was transient. A serious flood of the Tiber which endangered the corn-magazines of Rome and a famine that spread misery through Asia Minor fell short of causing grave anxiety. But in the spring of 162 came a sudden threat of war in Britain, Chatti invaded Upper Germany and Raetia, and the Parthian king Vologases III declared war in due form. The local troubles in the North-West and on the Upper Rhine were quickly suppressed by the governors on the spot. But in the East war soon brought disaster. The Parthian general Osroes advanced into Armenia to place the Arsacid Pacorus upon the throne and the governor of Cappadocia was defeated and killed at Elegeia. The Syrian legions, demoralized by many years of peace, scattered before the enemy, who marched into the undefended provinces and attacked the Syrian cities so that the inhabitants already had thoughts of defection from Rome. The war that Marcus had to face was a just war. The Emperor’s diligent teacher Fronto sought to dispel the scruples that beset his pupil. A plan of defense must be made. Was it the moment and were there the means to revive the eastern policy of Trajan that had slept for half a century? In Athens men spoke of the new 'Persian war' and of 'Xerxes', wishing victory and health to the “divine and brother-loving rulers”. Marcus ordered troops to the seat of war from the North, from the Rhine and the Danube, from Africa and Egypt. With the Senate’s approval he commissioned Verus to set out for the East. He himself wished to stay at Rome for “affairs in the City demanded his presence”. The reason was strange, perhaps only a pretext. Neither the flood nor any unrest meant serious danger or were beyond the capacity of any energetic deputy. Augustus had sent his co-regent, Antoninus had stayed at the world’s centre. These examples may have moved him, but was that the logic of the situation? The day was to come when he must leave the Eternal City for nearly as many years as Hadrian, and defend the Empire and the throne in the open field.

Verus was set on his way by his brother, in the spring of 162, when the news of the collapse of the Eastern Front had already reached Rome. But he was not moved to haste: it would take time before the legion from Bonn reached the seat of war. He fell ill at Canusium, and stayed there till he was restored; in the autumn he travelled to Athens, was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries and visited his teacher Herodes Atticus. Then came a leisurely progress from island to island and from city to city in western Asia Minor until he reached Antioch towards the spring of 163. By then the deployment of the Imperial forces was complete. The defeated and demoralized Syrian army had been re-organized mainly by an Eastern Syrian, the hard-bitten Avidius Cassius. Officers of proved capacity were at Verus’ disposal. But the enemy had long since drawn off, and he contented himself with his first success, the regaining of Armenia. The next task was the offensive from the Euphrates line. It is characteristic of Marcus and makes his refusal of the supreme command in this war yet more perplexing that, as he did not hesitate to tell the Senate after Verus’ death, all the strategy that defeated the Parthians was of his own devising. His principles did not forbid him to engage in a war of just retribution. He had not to be anxious about Rome but to dare, as he later dared. At the head of his armies in the heart of the East defending Hadrian’s legacy of panhellenism against the Persians, he could have won for himself vast prestige. He had plainly studied the history of Rome’s Eastern wars, appreciated the terrain and the problem and was able to devise and direct from Rome the correct strategic moves. In capacity and devotion to duty he surpassed Verus, who lacked all initiative and left his generals to act while he pursued his pleasures. He might have raised the Imperial authority high above the presumption of the ambitious and might have continued and completed Trajan’s policy to his own lasting glory. It was no lack of physical energy nor contempt of fame: in later years he shunned neither hardship nor his due meed of praise.

VERUS AND PARTHIA 

No one can say how his reason counselled him. In any event his belief in the guidance of the world allowed the seed to be planted from which was to spring the dangerous rising of Avidius Cassius that brought disillusionment in its train. Verus proved no general; it was his good fortune that the officers Marcus sent to serve under him were able enough, after the long canker of peace, to seize the chance of victory. Now as so often they upheld the imperialistic policy of Rome. Nor was Verus less fortunate in that the Parthians were not stronger.

In the early summer of 163 Statius Priscus, who had won successes in Judaea and Britain, pressed swiftly into Armenia from Cappadocia. With his group of legions and auxilia he took and destroyed the capital Artaxata and founded and garrisoned a new city thirty miles away. The Parthians did not defend what they had so quickly won the year before. Armenia was once more a dependency of Rome. Verus took the title ‘Armeniacus’, though Marcus waited till 164, when Statius’ successor Martius Verus pacified the country after new raids and gave to it a king by Rome’s grace in Sohaemus, a Roman senator born in Syrian Emesa. The offensive had followed Trajan’s model in its inception and success, but its true purpose was defense, so that Armenia was not made a province but a dependent kingdom protected by Roman arms as under Hadrian and Pius. Verus had himself hailed as ‘Hercules Pacifer’. He prepared to make peace, and the world believed it was attained. At this very moment the harmony between the brothers was endangered. Marcus, not ignorant of Verus’ unworthy conduct, sent his daughter and uncle to have the marriage celebrated at Ephesus and to set a monitor at his brother’s side. But he did not venture himself to journey to Syria, and again flinched from provoking reproach, for his heart was set on concord.

There was no peace. In the autumn of 164 one army group advanced from the Euphrates while detachments from the northern army pressed south into Osrhoene and Anthemusia in upper Mesopotamia. There were battles at Dausara, round Edessa, where the inhabitants massacred the Parthian garrison, and near Nisibis. The king Mannus Philorhomaios VIII, whom the Parthians had driven out, was soon restored to Edessa. This thrust spelt danger to the western offensive of the Parthian main army now on the right bank of the Euphrates farther to the south and to its retreat across the river. This was engaged with a third army, probably the main Roman force under Avidius Cassius, that plainly was working with the central group. After a hard-fought victory near Doura, this army pursued the enemy, who retired downstream, defeated them again at Sura, crossed the river and took Nicephorium. The results of this strategical masterpiece whereby the enemy forces were rolled up from north to south, northern Mesopotamia occupied and the hostile main force destroyed, opened the way for an advance into south Mesopotamia. Now the armies spread fanwise. Avidius Cassius marched down the river; Seleuceia opened its gates; next came the royal capital Ctesiphon that was reduced by siege. Both cities were destroyed from considerations of security. Like Trajan he had pressed to the heart of Parthia and taken its capital. Once again the armies of Rome had broken the hosts of Parthia; the satraps had soon been ready to change their overlords. The king of Parthia was a fugitive. The victory over his armies had conferred on Verus two salutations as imperator and the title ‘Parthicus Maximus’. This name, too, Marcus declined at first, though as the author of the plan of campaign he had an essential right to it. He may have doubted whether the task was complete. In the next year much was achieved. The central government of the one great power of the East, the only organized State that challenged Rome, was destroyed, the whole country to the borders of Iran was defenseless before the attack of Roman armies. In 166 the forces in north Mesopotamia passed on beyond the Tigris into the highlands of Media so that Verus could receive a fourth imperatorial salutation and take the name ‘Medicus’. Before his exploits the generalship and modesty of Trajan seemed to pale, and he had an itch for titles; now Marcus also accepted this appellation. The peak of victory seemed to be reached. The moment had come for ever bolder advance and the clear perfecting of Trajan’s achievement.

THE GREAT PLAGUE 

Then suddenly the tide of fortune turned. In the autumn of 165 a plague visited Cassius’ troops at Seleuceia and its ravages became more and more terrible until in the next spring the army had to retreat. Only remnants returned. To the god-ridden East and the terrified soldiers it seemed as though the divine powers of the country punished, where men had failed, the presumptuous invader, the perfidious destroyer of Seleucia. The troops carried with them into Syria the fell disease, which spread over Asia Minor and Egypt, Greece and Italy and had entered Rome before Verus had returned. Spreading misery and death in its progress it advanced to the Rhine and year after year carried desolation through the peoples of the Empire. But the honor of Rome’s arms had been cleared by the vigorous offensive of her generals; Cappadocia and Syria were secured, Armenia and Osrhoene with their kings and Roman garrison were again the glacis of the Empire. There could be no thought of annexing Parthia, nor do we hear of a Parthian king by the grace of Rome. That was beyond Marcus’ purposes, as may be seen from his policy in the border States. The dualism of Rome and Ctesiphon remained. Verus might plume himself as ‘propagator imperii’, but the work of Trajan was not consummated. The time had come for peace in the Orient, and the plague embittered even the rejoicing at what had been achieved. Marcus, still unperturbed, received Verus, who left his generals to govern Cappadocia and Syria and returned, feted by the Greek cities on his way. On October 12, 166 on the day on which the altar of Fortuna Redux had been consecrated to mark Augustus’ return from Syria, the two Emperors celebrated their stately triumph. The boy Commodus and a younger brother received the name of Caesar. Now at last Marcus, along with Verus, assumed the title ‘pater patriae’, which he, too, believed he had earned by what he had done at Rome, and in all piety made offering to win the gods’ blessing for the first decade of his reign.

IV.

THE WAR IN GERMANY