The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]

[14-19 A.D.]

Tiberius ruled the provinces on the whole in a Roman spirit, maintaining the dignity of the empire for the most part intact from the centre to the frontiers. The stability of the system, however rotten and decayed at heart, might still be measured by the strength and solidity of its outworks. At no period did the bulwarks of the Roman power appear more secure and unassailable. The efforts of Drusus and his son to overpower the Germani on their own soil had been stupendous; they had wielded forces equal at least to those with which Cæsar had added Gaul to the empire, and yet had not permanently advanced the eagles in any direction. But, on the other hand, it was soon found that the Germani were only formidable under the pressure of an attack. When the assault relaxed, the power they had concentrated in resistance crumbled readily away. With the death of Arminius all combined hostility to Rome ceased among them and meanwhile the arts and manners of the south advanced incessantly among them.

At the same time the long respite from military exactions allowed the pursuits of ease and luxury to fructify within the limits of the provinces. Gaul was no longer drained from year to year by the forced requisitions of men and horses, of arms and stores, which had fed the exhausting campaigns of Germanicus. Her ancient cities decked themselves with splendid edifices, with schools and theatres, aqueducts and temples. The camps on the Rhine and Danube were gradually transformed into commercial stations, and became emporiums of traffic with the north of Europe, where the fur and amber of the Hercynian forests and the Baltic coast were exchanged for wine and oil or gold and silver, those instruments of luxury which nature was supposed, in mercy or in anger, to have denied to the German barbarians. Such a state of affairs allowed the emperor to persist in his favourite plan of leaving the provincial governors for years unchanged at their posts. Each succeeding proconsul was no longer in a fever of haste to aggrandise himself by the plunder or renown of a foray beyond the frontiers. The administration of the provinces became a matter of ordinary routine; it lost its principal charms in the eyes of the senators, who could at last with difficulty be induced to exchange the brilliant pleasures of the capital, with all its mortifications and perils, for the dull honours of a distant government.

Nor can I discover in general the justice of accusing Tiberius of neglecting the safety of his remote possessions, which seem, on the contrary, to have flourished securely in the armed peace of his august empire. In Gaul the revolt of Sacrovir and his Belgian confederates was effectually suppressed; the outbreak of the Frisians, though at some cost of blood, seems to have been speedily quelled. Nor have we any distinct confirmation of the assertion of Suetonius, that Tiberius suffered the province to be ravaged with impunity by the Germani, which, if true, can apply only to some transient violation of the frontiers.

Nor does the assertion of Tiberius’ indifference seem to be better founded with regard to Mœsia. Tacitus steps frequently aside from his domestic narrative to record the affairs of this region and the exploits of the emperor’s lieutenants; while Appian makes special mention of the conquest of Mœsia under Tiberius, and of the establishment of provincial government in this quarter by his hand.[10] Sabinus, Pandus, and Labeo seem to have held the command there successively during the first half of this principate, and these men at least were not allowed to indulge in indolence, for their exertions and victories are a theme to which the historian repeatedly refers.

But the emptiness of these charges can be more clearly shown in the case of the dependent kingdom of Armenia, which, according to the same authority, Tiberius suffered to be seized by the Parthians, and wrested from the patronage of the empire. It appears, on the contrary, from the particular recital of Tacitus, that the bold occupation of this kingdom by Artabanus was immediately resented by the emperor with the energy of a younger man. Not only were the wild mountaineers of the Caucasus, the Iberians and Albanians, invited to descend upon the intruders; not only were the sons of Phraates released from their long detention at Rome, and directed to present themselves on their native soil, and claim the allegiance of their father’s subjects; but a Roman general, L. Vitellius, a man of distinguished valour and experience, was deputed to lead the forces of Asia and Syria against the enemy; and while it was hoped that a vigorous demonstration would suffice to hurl him back from the territory in dispute, instructions were not withheld, it would appear, to push on if necessary, and smite the Parthians with the strong hand of the empire. But these combinations proved speedily successful. Artabanus, already detested by many of his most powerful subjects, was compelled to descend from his throne, and take refuge in the far wilds of Hyrcania; while Tiridates, the son of Phraates, was accepted in his room [35 A.D.]. The Roman army, which had crossed the Euphrates, returned victorious without striking a blow, though, by a subsequent revolution, Artabanus was not long afterwards restored, and admitted, upon giving the required hostages, to the friendship of his lordly rivals [36 A.D.].

[4 B.C.-37 A.D.]

If Tiberius refrained from aggrandising his empire by fresh conquests, he was not the less intent on consolidating the unwieldy mass by the gradual incorporation of the dependent kingdoms enclosed within its limits. The contests between two rival brothers, Cotys and Rhescuporis, in Thrace, gave him a pretext for placing the fairest part of that country under the control of a Roman officer, thus preparing the way for its ultimate annexation. On the death of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, in the year 17, his country was declared a Roman province, and subjected to the rule of an imperial procurator. At the same period the frontier kingdom of Commagene was added to the dominions of the republic under the government of a prætor. Syria, the great stronghold of the Roman power in the East, was still skirted by several tributary kingdoms or ethnarchies, such as Chalcis, Emesa, Damascus, and Abilene; but the dependency of Judea, the wealthiest and proudest of all these vassal states, was wrested in the reign of Augustus from the dynasty to which it had been entrusted, and was still subjected by his successor to the control of the proconsul at Antioch.