Augustus (49 page)

A glance at the
orbis terrarum
showed that three great interrelated challenges were yet to be answered. First, the Alps were in the hands of fierce tribes and it was impossible to reach the eastern provinces by land around the top of the Italian peninsula. Second, the frontier of Macedonia was vaguely defined and hard to defend. Third, although the river Rhine, the existing Gallic frontier, ran from the North Sea to the Alps, there was constant westward pressure on it from Germanic tribes.

The ideal solution would be, first, to win control of the Alps and then move north to establish a defensible frontier lined with legions along the river Danube. In this way, buffer provinces in the north would protect Italy and Macedonia from direct attack. If the Rhine and the Danube were to mark the empire’s permanent boundary, a major strategic weakness would be likely to cause trouble in the future. This was that the heads of the two rivers formed a salient with its apex where the modern city of Basel stands today. The salient would allow hostile German tribes to operate on interior lines, giving them a huge military advantage.

So the final step would be to invade Germany and create a new frontier at the river Elbe. This would eliminate the salient and create a border roughly in a straight line between the North Sea and the Black Sea. Also, the territory thus gained would helpfully protect Gaul from eastern marauders.

This three-part plan of action may well have emerged through happenstance over the years, but its intellectual coherence and the fact that its constituent elements are interdependent strongly suggest that it was consciously conceived sometime after 19
B.C.
and the final pacification of Spain. It would have been intended as a broad framework to guide future military activity, if not as a precisely worked-out blueprint.

If this was the case, it is not too fanciful to guess that the plan’s inventor was the man who had won all of Augustus’ wars for him: the indispensable Agrippa.

Important changes were taking place in the “divine family,” with multiple consequences for its members and for Rome itself. The marriage in 21
B.C.
between the daughter of the
princeps,
Julia, and Agrippa succeeded where Augustus and Livia had conspicuously failed: it produced two sons, “an heir and a spare.” (Two daughters, Julia and Agrippina, quickly followed.) Gaius was born in 20
B.C.
and Lucius in 17. With the arrival of the second boy, Augustus adopted them both and brought them up in his house. They were known thereafter as Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar. It was as if they were the offspring of two fathers, with Julia playing only a subordinate role as a human incubator.

The dynastic intention was patent, but this time instead of one “Marcellus” there were two, doubling the chances of survival. This development has been presented as leaving Livia and her sons, Tiberius and Drusus, out in the cold. Concerned as ever to maintain the continuity of the bloodline, the
princeps
certainly did not see them as successors. It was widely suspected at the time that Livia would do everything she could to promote their cause, but there is no evidence that she schemed to subvert her husband’s settled intentions. Indeed, she would have been most unwise to allow any disharmony to appear between her and her husband. That Augustus is never recorded to have complained about her and that she remained in high favor throughout his life argue strongly for her loyalty and discretion.

In any case, Tiberius and Drusus had nothing whatever to complain about. Twenty-five and twenty-one years old, respectively, they had already shown signs of talent and ambition and been rewarded for it. The
princeps
was inventive at making the best use of the human material at hand, and as always was more than willing to nurture and promote youth. He arranged for both his stepsons to be granted a special dispensation to hold office before the permitted minimum age and he gave them various challenging jobs. Tiberius’ marriage to Vipsania was a happy one. Relations with their stepfather were warm. Tiberius could be somewhat dour, but Drusus was universally popular.

Some undated letters of Augustus survive that speak of his affection for them both. On one occasion he describes to Tiberius how he and Drusus spent all day gambling during a public holiday, playing for high stakes (here, incidentally, he shows himself in an attractive light, for absolute rulers can be poor losers at games):

Your brother Drusus made fearful complaints about his luck, yet in the long run was not much out of pocket…. I lost twenty thousand sesterces; but that was because, asusual, I behaved with excessive sportsmanship. If I had dunned every player who had forfeited his stakes to me, or not handed over my legitimate winnings when dunned myself, I would have been at least fifty thousand to the good.

In another letter he replies to Tiberius’ good wishes: “My state of health is of little importance compared with yours. I pray that the gods will always keep you safe and sound for us, if they have not taken an utter aversion to Rome.”

Both young men showed an aptitude for the military life and generalship, qualities that the
princeps
had every intention of exploiting.

Events precipitated, or supplied the pretext for, initiation of the imperial grand strategy. In 17
B.C.,
Marcus Lollius, a venal, wealth-grabbing new man and a favorite of Augustus, suffered a defeat in Gaul at the hands of some Germanic tribes. The battle was of no real importance and the reverse was quickly avenged, but a legionary standard was lost.

The
princeps
decided to treat the setback as a grave emergency and traveled to Gaul to take matters in hand himself, bringing with him Tiberius (whom he seems to have appointed governor of Long-haired Gaul). Once arrived, he found there was nothing for him to do, for, learning that Lollius was preparing a punitive expedition and that Augustus himself was on his way, the tribal horde had vanished back into its own lands. Nevertheless, the
princeps
remained in Gaul for three years.

Why so long? The information that survives prevents a confident answer. Some unkind tongues at Rome supposed that he wanted to leave Rome so that he could pursue his affair with Maecenas’ wife, Terentia. This is possible—if a little odd, for Livia likely accompanied her husband on this as on his other expeditions. It may have been on this occasion that Augustus turned down her request to grant citizenship to a Gaul, and one source dates a curious (if possibly fictional) incident to this time.

Apparently a plot against the
princeps
was discovered while he was in Gaul, implicating among others a grandson of Pompey the Great, a foolish young man called Gnaeus (or possibly Lucius) Cornelius Cinna. Augustus spent sleepless nights and anxious days wondering whether to execute him; according to Dio, Livia persuaded him that clemency would calm his critics and so was more likely than severity to deter future plots.

Augustus was probably laying the ground for a series of major military offensives. He reorganized the army, demobilizing a large number of time-expired soldiers who had joined up after Actium and settling them in Gaul and Spain. This was presumably accompanied by a recruiting drive. The length of a legionary’s service was extended to sixteen years (and twelve for members of the Praetorian Guard). At about this time Lugdunum (today’s Lyon) seems to have begun to operate as a major mint, coining gold and silver with which to pay legions on campaign in Gaul and Germany.

In 17 or 16
B.C.,
hostilities opened when the governor of Illyricum launched an attack on a couple of Alpine tribes, probably inhabitants of the region between Como and Lake Garda. Then in 15
B.C.
, to avenge some alleged atrocities on Roman citizens, Tiberius and Drusus headed a two-pronged attack into Raetia, an area covering today’s Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and western Austria, and into the lands of the Vindelici, in southern Bavaria. It seems to have been an easy victory, for the young commanders achieved all their aims in a single summer campaign. In the following year, Roman forces conquered and annexed the Maritime Alps.

As a rule, Roman armies won their wars against “barbarian” tribes in Spain, Gaul, or Germany by a preponderance of force, but they found it very difficult to stamp out the last embers of resistance. Time and again the enemy recovered, regrouped, and returned to the offensive, often using guerrilla tactics. Tiberius and Drusus decided to prevent a future Alpine revolt by a simple but brutal means: mass deportations of men of military age. Enough people were left behind to keep the area inhabited, but too few to launch an uprising. The new province of Raetia came into being. The geographer Strabo visited the region a generation later and reported a continuing “state of tranquillity.” If so, it was the tranquillity of desolation.

Not only had stage one of the military strategy been swiftly and brilliantly completed, but in the process stage two had been launched. This was because Raetia’s northern border was the river Danube, and a little additional fighting led to the acquisition of the neighboring territory of Noricum to the east (roughly the rest of Austria). Noricum abutted Pannonia, whose tribesmen had been defeated in Octavian’s Illyrian wars; although the Pannonians had been neither conquered nor occupied, for the time being they were quiet.

On Pannonia’s eastern borders, Moesia had already been subdued, although it was not felt necessary to turn it into a formal province for a generation or so. Pannonia was a lurking problem that would sooner or later have to be solved, but for the first time in its history Rome faced no direct threat south of the Danube.

This was a real and permanent achievement, and Augustus was well pleased. He commissioned a huge celebratory monument, the Tropaeum Alpium (Trophy of the Alps). Fifty feet high, it was a great square stone edifice, which supported a wide circular tower surrounded by columns and topped with a great stepped roof, like a squat spire. On the apex there probably stood a statue of the
princeps
. The monument’s still impressive remains can be seen at La Turbie, near Monaco.

In 13
B.C.,
the state’s two leading men returned to Rome, the
princeps
from Gaul, Agrippa from the eastern provinces, where he had spent the last three years. Augustus apparently recognized that the burden of empire demanded two co-rulers; Tiberius and Drusus were emerging as effective deputies. When they grew up, little Gaius and Lucius, in whom the genes of Augustus and Agrippa were mingled, would be the final inheritors of the Roman state.

It was an ingenious and ruthless scheme. However, its success would depend on the survival of all the parties; also, on the willingness of Tiberius and Drusus, after years of power and fame, to step aside at the right moment, remaining forever in second place. It would be asking a lot of their generosity, but Augustus was always implacable where the interests of the state and the “divine family” were at stake.

The Theater of Marcellus was finally dedicated by Augustus; the associated festivities included a performance of the Troy Game, an elaborate cavalry display. Boys of good birth joined societies that offered training in horsemanship, and they showed off their prowess in a mock battle between two groups of teenaged riders.

In what was probably his introduction to public life, little Gaius, only seven years old, took part in the game (presumably nominally), and put in an appearance at a theatrical performance. When he entered the theater the audience leaped to its feet and cheered him to the echo, and so Tiberius, who was presiding, let the boy sit next to his grandfather instead of in his designated place. Augustus expressed his annoyance in no uncertain terms, for he did not want the children to be spoiled by public attention they had done nothing to deserve. Later he gave Tiberius a sharp tongue-lashing.

Power was for use, not for ornament. Augustus did not allow Tiberius and Drusus to celebrate even well-deserved triumphs, although they received triumphal insignia (that is, they had the honor of a triumph although none was actually held). In theory, the brothers did not qualify for the honor, for they were not army commanders themselves, but deputies or
legati
of their stepfather. But a more important principle was at stake. Only the
princeps
should be a
triumphator,
for no one else was allowed to rival him for military glory. The last senator to hold a triumph had done so in 19
B.C.
Agrippa, the greatest general of the day, loyally held back, refusing to accept three triumphs when offered. However, Tiberius had no cause for resentment: this year he was consul for the first time, at the age of twenty-nine.

Splendid ceremonial aside, some important public business was put in hand. Augustus and Agrippa had their
imperium
renewed for another five years, and for the first time Agrippa was awarded
imperium maius,
the overriding authority that allowed him to give orders to provincial governors. This was a momentous event, for it placed him for the first time on completely equal terms with the
princeps
.