Europe: A History (40 page)
The term
provincia
, ‘sphere of action’, originally referred to the jurisdiction of magistrates sent to govern conquered lands. Under the Empire, it came to refer to the lands themselves. Each province was given a charter, the
lex provincialis
, which determined its limits, its subdivisions, and its privileges. Each was entrusted to a governor, either a proconsul or a propraetor, who raised troops, collected tribute, and through ‘edicts’ spoke with the force of law. Each governor was accompanied by a staff of legates appointed by the Senate, by a military guard, and by an army of clerks. A distinction was made between imperial provinces, which the Emperor retained under his direct control, and senatorial provinces, which were left to the Senate. The creation of provinces had far-reaching consequences both for Rome
and for the fate of the Empire. In the short run, Rome thrived mightily from the vast influx of tribute and from the constant traffic in people and goods. In the long run, through the steady internal consolidation of the provinces, the capital city was squeezed from the sources of wealth and power. Over four centuries, ‘Mother Rome’ was gradually rendered redundant by her own children.
As Rome waned, the provinces waxed. In the first stage, provincial élites supplied the droves of newcomer knights and senators who swamped the traditional oligarchy and ran the Empire. In the second stage, when the military forces were concentrated on an increasingly self-sufficient periphery, provincial cities such as Lugdunum (Lyons) or Mediolanum (Milan) flourished in competition with Rome. Political life was plagued by the rivalries of provincial generals, many of whom became emperors. In the third stage, the links between the periphery and Rome were weakened to the point where the provinces began to claim autonomous status. Especially in the West, the fruit was ready to fall from the tree. The centrifugal shift of power and resources was one of the underlying causes of the Empire’s later distress,
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The Empire’s finances, like its provinces, were split into two sectors. The
Aerarium
of the Senate was the successor to the Republican Treasury in the Temple of Saturn and Ops. The imperial
Fiscus
was an innovation of Augustus. In theory, it was separate from the Emperor’s private property, the
patrimonium Caesaris;
in practice, the boundaries were not respected. The main items of income included rent from the state lands in Italy, tribute from the provinces,
portaría
or ‘gate dues’, the state monopoly in salt, the mint, direct taxes on slaves, manumissions and inheritance, and extraordinary loans. Apart from the army, the main items of expenditure included religious ceremonies, public works, administration, poor relief and the corn dole, and the imperial court. In time, imperial agents took over all tax-collecting outside Rome.
The army was gradually increased in size and strength, reaching a maximum in 31
BC
of almost sixty legions. After Actium, the Empire’s permanent defence force consisted of 28 legions of c.6,000 professionals apiece. The Navy maintained squadrons on the Rhine and the Danube, as well as in the Mediterranean. From 2
BC
Augustus initiated the nine cohorts of the élite praetorian lifeguard, based in Rome. The soldiers were paid 720 d. per annum for a praetorian, 300 d. for a cavalryman, 225 d. for a legionary, and they served for twenty years.
The legions were known by number and by name. Augustus retained the sequential numbering used both by his own and by Mark Antony’s army, awarding distinctive names to legions with the same number. Hence there was a Legio III Augusta and a Legio III Cyrenaica, a Legio VI Victrix and a Legio VI Ferrata. Several legions possessed the number I, since emperors liked to give seniority to units raised by themselves. Legions which were destroyed in battle, such as the XVII, XVIII, and XIX lost in Germany, or the Legio IX Hispana wiped out in Britain in
AD
120, were never restored.
The
limes
, the ‘frontier line’, was a vital feature of the Empire’s defence. It was not, as is sometimes supposed, an impenetrable barrier. From the military point of view it was more of a cordon, or series of parallel cordons, which, whilst deterring casual incursions, would trigger active counter-measures as soon as it was seriously breached. It was a line which normally could only be crossed by paying
portaría
and by accepting the Empire’s authority. It was, above all, a marker which left no one in doubt as to which lands were subject to Roman jurisdiction and which were not. Its most important characteristic was its continuity. It ran up hill and down dale without a break, and along all frontier rivers and coasts. In places, as in Britain, it took the form of a Great Wall on the Chinese model. Elsewhere it might carry a wooden stockade atop earthworks, or a string of linked coastal forts, or, as in Africa, blocks of fortified farmhouses facing the desert interior. Its guarded crossing-points were clearly marked with gates and roadways. They naturally became the focus for towns and cities which grew round the military camps and markets which the upkeep of the frontier required.
ILLYRICUM
T
HE
Roman province of Illyricum occupied the eastern shore of the Adriatic between the Italian district of Istria and the Greek province of Epirus. It was bounded to the north by Pannonia beyond the river Dravus and to the east by Moesia and Macedonia. It was known to the Greeks as
Illyris Barbara
, being the part of ancient Illyria which had remained free from the conquests of Philip of Macedon. In imperial times it was divided into three prefectures—Liburnia and Dalmatia on the coast and lapydia in the interior. Apart from Siscia (modern Zagreb) and Narona (Mostar), its principal cities were all seaports—Tartatica, Ader (Zadar), Salonae (Split), Epidaurum. The southernmost fortress city of Lissus had been founded by Syracusan colonists in 385
BC.
(See Appendix III, p. 1231.)
Illyricum was subdued in stages. It first paid tribute to Rome in 229 BC, and was twice overrun during the Macedonian Wars of the second century. It was fully incorporated under Augustus in 23 BC. Having participated in the great Pannonian revolt of
AD
6–9, it remained in the Empire until Byzantine times.
Little is known of the ancient Illyrians. Their language was Indo-European, and probably supplied an underlying stratum to modern Albanian. Their material culture was renowned for its sophisticated metal-work. From the sixth century their ‘Situla art’ was distinguished by fine repoussé figures set on bronze wine-buckets amidst scenes of feasting, racing, and riding. A silver coinage was minted in the third century. Illyrian warriors fought in chain-mail like the Scythians, but not in chariots like the Celts.
1
Illyricum gave birth to two Roman emperors and to St Jerome. The Emperor Diocletian retired to a grandiose palace built on the seafront of his native Salonae. His octagonal mausoleum survived as a Christian church—an ironic fate for the resting-place of the Christians’ last great persecutor. St Jerome was born at nearby Strido in
AD
347, more than 200 years before the first appearance of the Slavs who were to lay the foundations of the future Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro.
Illyricum, like Britannia, belongs to a group of Roman provinces whose ethnic and cultural connections were totally transformed by the great migrations (see Chapter IV). But the memory of the Illyrians was cherished by their successors. Their legacy is very different from that bequeathed to those parts of Europe which never knew Rome at all.
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ILLYRIA
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LUGDUNUM
I
N
43 BC the Proconsul- Muniatus Plancus drew the centre-line of a new city overlooking the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône. Lugdunum was to be the principal city of Roman Gaul, the meeting-point of a star-like network of paved roads. Its amphitheatres can still be seen on the hill of Fourvières. It commanded not only the Rhone-Rhine corridor but the route leading north-west from Italy to the Channel.
1
The Rhône, though navigable, was a swift and turbulent river. Downstream, ships risked being wrecked on numerous reefs and islands; upstream, they could only make headway against the current with the help of horses. In the decades before the arrival of steamboats in 1821, 6,000 horses worked the towpath, hauling cargoes up to Lyons before floating back down on rafts.
From 1271 to 1483, the lower Rhône constituted an international frontier. The left bank, known as
I’Empi
, lay in the Holy Roman Empire. The right bank,
le Riaume
, and all the islands, belonged to the Kingdom of France. Fifteen stone bridges were built between Geneva and Aries; and several sets of twin towns, such as Valence and Beaucaire, grew up on opposing banks.
In that same era, Lyons recovered the economic pre-eminence which it had once commanded in ancient Gaul. It was annexed to France by Philippe le Bel, who entered the city on 3 March 1311, after which it headed ‘the French isthmus’ linking France’s northern and southern possessions. From 1420 it hosted four international fairs annually; from 1464 it received privileges aimed at subverting the commerce of Geneva; and from 1494 to 1559 it supplied the logistical base for France’s Italian wars. Its merchant élite was distinguished by many Italian families, including the Medici, the Guadagni (Gadagne), and numerous Genoese. This ‘lively, determined and secretive city’, ‘caught up in whirlpools and rhythms of a very particular kind’, made itself ‘the leading centre of the European economy.’
2
‘Vieux Lyons’, the old quarter nestling beside the Saône, recalls the city’s golden decades. A hillside warren of narrow streets connected by tunnel-like
traboules
or ‘transambulant passage-ways’, it is crowded with highly ornamented Gothic and Renaissance hotels, courtyards, squares, and churches. Its names, from the
Manécanterie
or ‘cathedral choir-school’ to the
Hôtel de Gadagne
on the
Rue Juiverie
or ‘Jewry Street’, ring with the memory of colourful bygone inhabitants. The Place Bellecour was laid out under Louis XIV on the interfluvial plain. Its statue of the Sun King, which had been shipped from Paris by sea, came to grief in transit and had to be fished from the river.
Given Lyons’s strategic location, and its industrial prowess based on silk
[JACQUARD]
,
geographers have wondered why it never ousted Paris as France’s capital. The prospect has remained an unrealized possibility. From 1311 Lyons has had to be content as France’s second city. For geography only determines what is possible; it does not determine which possibility will triumph. ‘A country is a storehouse of dormant energies’, wrote the master, ‘whose seeds have been planted by nature but whose use depends on man.’
3
Thanks to the
limes
, Rome could manage its relations with the barbarians in an orderly fashion. Throughout the Empire, barbarian officers and auxiliaries served with the Roman army, and barbarian tribes were settled by agreement in the imperial provinces. The romanization of barbarians, and the barbarization of Romans, were processes that had been operating since the earliest conquests of the Republic in Italy. After all, Caesar’s ‘trousered senators’ were Romans of Celtic origin who still liked to wear their native leggings under their togas.
Societies, it has been said, rot from the head down, like dead fish. Certainly, the list of early emperors contains more than its share of degenerates.
The Emperor Tiberius (r.
AD
14–37), adopted son of Augustus, left Rome for Capri, to practise his cruelties and perversions. Under him, mass proscriptions returned to fashion, fuelled by the deadly work of the
delatores
or informers. Caligula (r. 37–41) ordered himself deified in his lifetime, and appointed his horse to a consulship. ‘It was his habit to commit incest with each of his three sisters in turn,’ Suetonius wrote; ‘and, at large banquets when his wife reclined above him, he placed them all in turn below him.’ ‘Because of his baldness and hairiness, he announced that it was a capital offence for anyone to mention goats in any context.’
19
He succumbed to an assassin who struck, appropriately, at his genitals. Claudius (r. 41–54), who married two murderous wives, Messalina and Agrippina, was poisoned by a toadstool sauce mixed with his mushrooms.
20
The Emperor Nero (r. 54–68), an obsessive aesthete and sybarite, disposed of his mother by having her stabbed (after an attempted drowning miscarried). He murdered his aunt by administering a laxative of fatal strength, executed his first wife on a false charge of adultery, and kicked his pregnant second wife to death. ‘Not satisfied with seducing free-born boys and married women,’ wrote Suetonius, ‘he raped the Vestal Virgin Rubria.’ Then:
Having tried to turn the boy Sporus into a girl by castration, he went through a wedding ceremony with him—dowry, bridal veil and all—which the whole Court attended; then brought him home and treated him as a wife … The world would have been a happier place had Nero’s father Domitius married the same sort of a wife.
21
In the end, he committed suicide with the words
Qualis artifex pereo
(what an artist perishes in me).
The Emperor Galba (r. 68–9), a military man, was killed by the mutinous military in ‘the year of the four emperors’, as were his successors Otho and Vitellius. Vespasian (r. 69–79), son of a provincial tax-gatherer, succeeded in his main aim—’to die on his feet’. His last words were ‘Dear me, I must be turning into a god.’
22
Titus (r. 79–81) was supposedly poisoned by his brother, after a reign of unusual felicity marred only by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius. The supposed poisoner, the Emperor Domitian (r. 81–96), was stabbed to death by his wife and her accomplices. Eight of the ten immediate successors of Augustus had died a nasty death,
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PANTA
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