Spread to the regions of the East and of the West and to the bounds of the North and of the South, the Pax Augusta preserves every corner of the world safe from the fear of brigandage.
Diffusa in orientis occidentisque tractus et quidquid meridiano aut septentrione finitur, pax augusta omnis terrarum orbis angulos a latrociniorum metu servat immunes.
M. Velleius Paterculus, Roman History 2.126.3.
The years 31 BCE–14 CE, during which Augustus asserted his position as first man of the Roman Commonwealth, were celebrated by later historians and poets as a golden age when the world was secure. The term they coined for it, Pax Augusta – inaugurating a much longer epoch modern historians call the Pax Romana – is usually translated as ‘the Peace of Augustus’ or ‘Augustan Peace’, though ‘Revered Peace’ is perhaps more accurate. (There was even an altar, the exquisite Ara Pacis Augustae, in Rome that celebrated Augustus’ safe return from the western provinces, lands he made peaceful.) The words evoke an epoch of uninterrupted peace across the vast Roman Empire, a serene period in which its citizens lived lives free of war and suffering. Today, one often reads in history books a line to the effect ‘a 40-year period of peace took place under Augustus’. There is only one problem with this assessment. It is a fallacy – or at best a half-truth.
As I researched and wrote my biographies of Augustus’ generals Nero Claudius Drusus (2011), Germanicus Caesar (2013) and Marcus Agrippa (2015), I was increasingly struck by the sheer number of military operations these and other field commanders were engaged in when it was supposed to be a world finally at peace. In fact, there were numerous skirmishes along the borders and punitive raids in response; but also insurgencies – acts of sedition, as the Romans called them – by supposedly conquered and pacified peoples, occurring in the same regions year after year, despite repeated efforts to crush them. Then there was the disenchantment of the rank and file of the army, whether stationed in the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain or on the banks of the Danube or Rhine rivers. In Rome and other cities too, riots broke out periodically among ordinary citizens frustrated by natural and man-made disasters, and people died in them. In addition, Augustus actively waged war to acquire and conquer new lands. Using direct military force, Augustus nearly doubled the ‘imperium of the Roman People’, as he himself called it – that portion of the world we now call the Roman Empire. It was a greater accomplishment than that achieved by either Pompeius Magnus (‘Pompey the Great’) or the even more famous Julius Caesar (correctly Iulius Caesar), men widely regarded as among Rome’s best generals. In most cases the Romans succeeded in retaining these annexed territories long after Augustus died. It was an astonishing achievement then and one that merits study today.
Amidst all this conflict, how could Augustus’ apologists claim the world was really at peace? Lasting more than four decades, the ‘reign’ of Augustus was remarkable for being the longest in Roman civilization’s entire 1,000-year long history. The man himself is an enigmatic, even a paradoxical, figure, and his motives are often obscure or opaque. When not presented in public as a togawearing magistrate or priest, Augustus is shown as a military commander.
One of the most instantly recognizable artefacts to survive from antiquity is the so-called statue of ‘Augustus of Prima Porta’. (It was the centrepiece of the marvellous Moi, Auguste, Empereur de Rome exposition staged at the Grand Palais, Paris, which I was fortunate to attend in June 2014 in the bimillennary year of Augustus’ death.) It is a puzzling sculpture. Discovered in 1863 on the Via Flaminia, it is presumed to have come from the nearby villa associated by some with Livia, Augustus’ wife, though the exact location of the find spot is nowhere recorded. No one is quite sure when it was carved, but 4 CE seems likely, and it was probably a copy of an original in bronze cast around 20 BCE. Standing 2 metres (7 feet) tall, it survives as a bare white marble figure but in ancient times it was once painted to be lifelike. For all its magnificence, the image is a visual paradox. The youthful figure wears the anatomical cuirass and arming doublet of a senior officer. His raised right arm infers that he is acknowledging an acclamation from the troops, or that he is calling for silence and about to address them. Yet he seems curiously under-dressed for the occasion: there is no parazonium (an officer’s sword) or spear – in fact, a weapon of any kind; his paludamentum (the cloak worn by a senior officer) is not attached to his shoulders, but decorously draped around his waist and over his left arm; rather than wearing elaborate boots, he is barefoot like an athlete, semi-divine hero or a god. Is he dressed for war, or is he dressed for peace? Is he the peacemaker who is always ready to make war? Or is he the warlord who is always ready to make peace?
How Augustus accomplished his rise and dominance has been closely studied by historians. The legal, political, literary and artistic life of the Roman world he ‘ruled’ over has been well researched by modern academics. Scholars have tended to view the military dimension of his reign, such as his relationship to the army, his generals and the campaigns they fought, largely as an adjunct to these other aspects – for example, see Sir Ronald Syme (1939 and 1986), Kurt A. Raaflaub (1979), Erich S. Gruen (1985), J.W. Rich (2003) or Fred K. Drogula (2015). I believe that to understand Augustus the man, and to fully account for his achievements, it is essential to study how he waged wars and managed the men who fought them. Events presented Augustus with often difficult choices, to which he had to respond. How he did so reveals much about him.
This book is not another biography of Augustus, though the life story of the man is part of it. Nor is it a political history, though politics does feature in it. Rather, it examines Augustus as commander-in-chief. What did pax mean for Augustus and the Roman People? Did Augustus have an ‘imperial vision’ for the Roman Empire? If he did, was it one of methodical expansion using war and diplomacy, or was it opportunistic – or, to put it another way, did Augustus have a ‘grand strategy’? If so, did it begin as one or did it evolve over time? Which wars were ones of necessity and which of choice? What defined victory or a successful outcome? What kind of military leader was Augustus? How deeply was he personally involved in the management of war, in the setting of goals or formulation of strategies and tactics in regional and local campaigns and conflicts? Who were his generals and field commanders? How and why did he pick those individuals? How much authority did he delegate to his regional deputies? How did they perform in carrying out their duties? Did Augustus learn from military successes or setbacks and apply the lessons? How did Augustus present his military achievements to the Roman People? And finally, how successful was he in achieving the Pax Augusta?
I have wrestled for a long time on how best to present my findings and discussed different approaches with my friend and mentor, Karl Galinsky, who is the foremost scholar of Augustus. One approach would have been to devote chapters to the examination of specific themes, such as the army and reforms Augustus made to it, aspects of his leadership, the individual wars, the victory propaganda and so forth, and dive deep into each topic. The risk was that the resulting book would have been somewhat academic, repetitive and rather dry.
The approach I have decided to take is modelled on an ‘after-action review’ or AAR. This is a leadership and knowledge sharing technique widely used in modern military and government organizations to better understand events, activities or programmes. AARs can be helpful in identifying deficiencies, strengths and areas for specific improvement. They seek to answer several questions. What was expected to happen? What actually occurred? What went well and why? What can be improved and how? It provides a good, structured format to evaluate Augustus at war.
The start of an AAR is an accurate chronology of what actually happened. Chapters 1 through to 7 present a straight narrative account of the period beginning 1 January 31 BCE (a few months before the Battle of Actium) to 19 August 14 CE (when he died), and the events immediately following. The chapters mark the discrete periods of time when Augustus’ legal military power to command his province (imperium proconsulare) was renewed. These intervals form natural beginnings and endings, like modern presidencies or terms in office of prime ministers. In these periods, Augustus had to deal with the issues as they arose – usually unexpectedly – and it is in studying his actions and reactions to events and crises that much can be learned. ‘Hindsight is 20/20’: Augustus neither had any idea that he would live as long as he did nor how his life would unfold after Actium. Throughout, I follow the dictum of investigative journalists, which is to ‘work from the facts outwards: never a thesis inwards’, letting the known facts speak for themselves. This is the unfolding story of Rome as a military power and the role war played in its often clumsy transformation from what modern historians call the Late Republic to the Early Empire, with all the twists and turns of an international thriller – and a cast of thousands.
Assembling a chronology and making sense of the whens, whos, whats, whys and hows was a crucial task in writing Augustus at War. For the events of history from 31 BCE to 14 CE, I closely studied written records by contemporary and later Roman historians for facts, supplemented by insights gleaned from archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, prosopography and the visual arts. The material available to study today is challenging. Augustus is known to have written thirteen volumes of memoirs (Suet., Div. Aug. 85). Sadly, the ravages of time have been unkind to them; all are lost and only a few anecdotes and remarks have been preserved. Had they survived complete today, we might have been able to read first-hand about his personal ambitions or the aspirations he had for his nation, and from them assess how well he led his people through war to peace. What has come down to us is his own Res Gestae, literally meaning ‘Things Done’. It is a formal – some say propagandistic – account of his deeds and one that has to be read with care. Yet it is a vitally important primary source from the star actor in the story, one told in his own words. I have included his Res Gestae in its entirety – both in Latin and in an English translation – as Appendix 1. The reader unfamiliar with this important document might wish to read this first before starting the main narrative.
Studying the accounts of Roman historians provides a survey of Augustus’ world and the timeline of key events; but on matters of, say, his abilities as a leader or military strategist, they can sometimes come up short – not necessarily because they are bad researchers; rather it is the fact that the surviving material usually omits these aspects because ancient writers were not generally interested in them. Historical records of any age can never be completely trusted: every writer has an agenda, a purpose for writing, and writes to his strengths. The books of contemporary Titus Livius (Livy) – arguably Rome’s greatest historian – covering the years of Augustus’ principate end at 9 BCE. They survive as the Periochae, essentially short entries from an ancient library catalogue, the original texts having long since been destroyed. Velleius Paterculus, a commander who served under Tiberius Caesar and who had first-hand experience of combat in the Western Balkans, is often criticized as a sycophant – unfairly in my opinion – to the man who succeeded Augustus as ‘First Man’. Several of the best ancient historians are weakest when explaining tactics or the details of battles, because they were not themselves military men or they deemed these minutiae to be unimportant to their narratives. They can also be selective about which events to include in their chronicles. In Jewish Antiquities, Josephus only focuses on events in Judaea. Others may conflate one event with another, or omit them altogether. Florus often does this. In the case of Cassius Dio’s Roman History, which is the most complete and detailed source for the Augustan period but written 200 years later, the two surviving manuscripts have lacunae – gaping holes or tears – where entire years are missing: that history is literally lost to us. Thus a few militarily significant events could not be dated with complete certainty because of the unreliability or vagueness of the source material. Whenever this is the case, I have fully disclosed the problems of reconciling different dates in the endnotes. Suetonius gives us snippets of war stories and glimpses of several notable personalities in his biographies of Augustus, Tiberius, Caius (Caligula), Claudius and Nero, but usually does not tie them to a specific historical date.
The challenges of working with the extant sources were remarked upon by the prolific scholar Sir Ronald Syme in his paper ‘Lentulus and the Origin of Moesia’, published in 1934 in volume 24 of The Journal of Roman Studies. In his introduction he writes:
The ancient evidence for the wars and conquests of Augustus is not only fragmentary: the fragments themselves are capricious and misleading. Chance and design have conspired to produce a like result; and the interested partiality of contemporary authorities has been nobly seconded by the ignorance or the indifference of subsequent compilers.
Commenting on the paucity of detail about campaigns and the commanders who led them, he goes on:
They have been omitted, accidentally or even deliberately, and with them a large piece of history has either perished utterly or has narrowly escaped oblivion. What has survived in other sources is seldom detailed enough to fix the date and determine the significance of their exploits.
He died in 1989, aged 86. I never had the honour of meeting him, but as if warning me from the grave he offers this caveat: ‘this being so, it is the duty of the historian, not merely to interpret what is recorded, but always to remember how little after all has been recorded’.
In Chapter 8, while heeding Sir Ronald’s advice, I attempt to address the questions this book sets out to answer about leadership, strategy and operations, grouped into key themes and issues. In this assessment chapter the ‘ABC’ principles of the forensic scientist apply: ‘assume nothing; believe nobody; check everything’. Informing my final assessment are the insights I have gleaned from several contemporary commanders, commentators, government officials and statesmen. I have talked with serving officers and soldiers as well as veterans who have seen combat first-hand. An avid viewer of Charlie Rose on PBS and HARDtalk on BBC World News, I have learned from interviews with highranking military and senior government professionals much about generalship, the pragmatics of field warfare, the management of large government organizations and the gentle art of diplomacy.
They remind us that there is a price to be paid in blood and treasure for peace; that despite the best preparations and advanced planning, heads of state and commanders-in-chief nevertheless still find themselves dealing with unexpected crises and have to make urgent decisions about whether to put men and matériel in harm’s way; that the decision to go to war is never taken lightly; that intelligence upon which decisions are made is often incomplete and subject to bias and misinterpretation; that the narrow objectives of campaigns can quickly become subject to scope creep and morph into missions very different than originally envisioned; that policy agendas change; that sometimes the only choices are bad choices, but one still has to choose – ‘doing nothing is not an option’; that the act of intervening in a conflict can change the situation on the ground and create new and unforeseen dangers and dilemmas; that picking allies and sustaining relationships with them through rewards and sanctions is fraught with difficulty and may not, in the end, support policy objectives; and that deciding when to suspend operations, and the manner of its doing, can have long-term consequences if the outcomes and timetable are not first fully considered. These test the mettle of men and women in leadership positions today. It was no different for Augustus or his deputies.
During the time Augustus ruled, many men served under him and in his name. Rather than interrupt the flow of the narrative with biographical backgrounds of the many supporting actors, I have assembled detailed profiles of more than ninety of his known colleagues, deputies and allies in Appendix 2. Their stories are as varied, interesting and astonishing as any group of high achievers and heroes, scoundrels and sons-of-bitches can be. Similarly, the composition and histories of the diverse military units they commanded are fascinating stories in their own right. Good and great, bad and ugly, Rome’s war fighters were as much petulant as professional, each legion and cohort jealously guarding its traditions, rights and privileges. I have assembled these under Orders of Battle in Appendix 3. Even the coins the troops received in payment for service were a means for Augustus to shape opinion about his deeds, as Appendix 4 shows.
The astute reader might ask why I chose to cover the period 31 BCE–14 CE? Augustus died in 14 CE so that year marks the end of Augustus’ reign. A traditional view for its start is 27 BCE (the date of the so-called ‘First Constitutional Settlement’) or – and that was Augustus’ own view – 23 BCE (the date of the so-called ‘Second Constitutional Settlement’ when he assumed the tribunician power). These might be considered his political victories. Roman historians, however, dated his rule from the pivotal military victory at Actium (see, for example, Suet., Div. Aug. 8.3 and Dio, 56.30.5), representing a contiguous period of fortyfive years. Again, Augustus himself refrained from doing so because – as you will read – that victory was won in a civil rather than a foreign war (an important distinction), even if war was formally declared only against Kleopatra.
Studying the Romans requires some effort on the part of a modern-day reader with respect to dates, titles and spellings of personal and place names. Writing about the ancient world involves making several editorial decisions and presentational compromises to make it intelligible. I have tried to be rational and consistent in my usage, but as the writer of this book they are, in the final analysis, my choices.
Chronology is one of them. The Romans had their own calendar using the names of each year’s two consuls, and ancient historians routinely refer to dates in this way. For modern readers it is cumbersome and very confusing. Our own style of identifying years by serial numbers makes life so much easier! However, in respect of dates, I have adopted the increasingly accepted convention ‘BCE’ (before the Common Era) instead of B.C., and ‘CE’ (Common Era) for A.D. (anno Domini). The events in Augustus’ life described in this book occur in both epochs. Thus Augustus received his honorary title in 27 BCE (27 B.C.) and died in 14 CE (A.D. 14). I am aware some readers find this format strange and foreign, but it is common in research literature. Popular classicist Mary Beard is on record in A Don’s Life – her column for the Times Literary Supplement – on 26 September 2011 as stating the convention has been around for years and that about half of the academic papers published on ancient history display dates in this format.
Under each year I also include the names of the consuls appointed for the year. According to the Roman constitution, these two magistrates – elected from the members of the Senate in the autumn of the prior year – were the most senior in the Res Publica. Having completed their term in office, these men – now ex- or proconsuls – formed a bench of talent from which Augustus and the Senate chose governors of provinces and legates of the legions. Faced with a shrinking number of qualified men, Augustus encouraged consuls to resign midway through their terms in office to make way for other consules suffecti, suffect or replacement consuls. Election to the consulate was also a way for Augustus to recognize and reward men who had served him well or showed promise for future assignments. The observant reader will note the names of many military commanders among the lists of consuls during Augustus’ principate in the course of reading the book.
The status-conscious Romans delighted in convoluted job titles. (That fact reveals something of the mindset of these status-conscious, legalistic ancient people.) The Glossary and Appendix 2 define the most important. There are generally no modern equivalents for Roman political, military and religious offices, so I have used the Latin style throughout. I do this to be accurate and authentic, not obscurantist. A case in point is how historians refer to Augustus as ‘emperor’. It is an Anglicisation of imperator. To translate the word this way is a mistake, however. It simply means ‘commander’. It was a spontaneous commendation from the soldiers – a Latin ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ – as they, his countrymen, cheered their leader for bringing them victory on the battlefield. It was an honour to be proudly cited thus in the after-action report presented to the Senate, to add the title after his name and have it carved on inscriptions for posterity. Hence ‘MANTONIUS IMP[erator]’ which appears on coins from 41 BCE. It did not yet have the far-reaching regal or despotic connotation of ‘emperor’ promoted by Augustus’ self-indulgent successors. His radical innovation was that from 38 BCE he audaciously adopted imperator as his own first name. Thereafter, he unabashedly used it on coins and inscriptions, consciously and purposely presenting himself as the nation’s military commander: Imp. Caesar Divi filius Augustus.
Like their official titles, the Romans had long personal names to match, complete with filial connections. They generally had two parts, a forename (praenomen) and a family or clan name (nomen genticulum). From the later days of the first century BCE, it was becoming common to have three by adding a nickname (cognomen), which might describe a distinguishing feature. Victorious commanders in battle – the imperatores – might also be granted a honorific title (agnomen or cognomen) such as Germanicus for extraordinary action in Germania. Modern historians usually call Romans by this last name, hence Caesar for C. Iulius Caesar, or Augustus for Imp. Caesar Divi filius Augustus. (I have used Iulius for Julius and the abbreviated forms Imp. Caesar before 27 BCE, and Augustus thereafter in the text.) By tradition, Roman men and women in extended families often had the same name – Augustus was a particularly enthusiastic user, requiring his adopted sons to use the form Iulius Caesar so that they were clearly identified as part of the gens Iulia, while allowing them to keep their praenomen. Thus, Caius Vipsanius Agrippa and his brother Lucius became respectively Caius Iulius Caesar and Lucius Iulius Caesar; and Tiberius Claudius Nero became Tiberius Iulius Caesar. Tiberius’ son was named after his younger brother, Nero Claudius Drusus, and to avoid confusion between the two men the uncle is often called Drusus the Elder, Drusus Maior or Drusus I, while the nephew is called Drusus the Younger, Drusus Minor or Drusus II. The reader will be forgiven for thinking that studying the Domus Augusta, the ‘House of Augustus’, can quickly become very confusing: it is, even for people intimately familiar with the Roman period. There is some relief for the reader in that I have omitted the father’s name in all cases.
In some cases the Latin name has mutated into an Anglicism through common usage, such as Livy for Livius or Pliny for Plinius. For the names of ancient historians, I use the modern form throughout. For the protagonists in the story, however, I retain the original, authentic form. I know some readers dislike this approach, but I believe we owe it to the people of history to get their names right. It simply respects the names by which they themselves were known in their own time. Hence I use Marcus Antonius rather than Marc Antony or Mark Antony (popularized by William Shakespeare). Some names were actually Greek in origin, but were recorded with new phonetic spellings by Roman historians for their Latin-speaking audience, and thus found their way into later English translations and became the de facto spellings. Thus I call the Thracian king Roimetalkes not Rhoemetalces because this is faithful to the original spelling found on his coins and inscriptions. It is also why I use a ‘K’ in Kleopatra, which is the spelling in Greek – her first language – rather than Cleopatra, since the form with the ‘C’ was how her Roman captors spelled her name.
Where a place has a Latin name, I prefer to use it since the modern name creates a false impression of the scale and feel of the ancient place: hence Ara Ubiorum rather than Cologne, which at this time more likely looked like a town of the American Wild West. In other cases, where the modern place name is unfamiliar to a reader I use the ancient name, such as Antiocheia on the Orontes (in Roman Syria) rather than Antakya (now in Turkey). Some ancient places – especially in the eastern Mediterranean – have both Latin and Greek names, such as Laodicea and Loadikeia, in which case I tend to use the Greek form. The exceptions are Actium, Athens, Egypt and Rome, because to use Aktion, Athenae (or Athenai), Aegyptus and Roma would be unnecessarily pedantic; and places for which the ancient name is not known, where I use the modern name unless there is a well-known Anglicism. I have listed ancient and modern place names on page 325 for convenience.
The names and places used by the indigenous peoples who sided with or fought against the Romans are only known to us through Greek and Latin writings, and then but only by Romanized names. We do not know what Arminius of the Cherusci nation was called in his own language, or Marboduus of the Marcomanni. Few Germanic place names survive, though intriguingly the geographer Ptolemy lists several towns and even offers map co-ordinates for them. While attempts have been made to identify their precise locations, they are at best tentative.
The Latin version is used for Roman officer ranks, arms, equipment and battle formations throughout the text, since there is often no modern equivalent. The Romans were not as precise in naming things as we are today. That, too, is an insight into the Roman mind. Definitions of the commonly used technical terms are defined in the Glossary.
The symbol HS followed by a number is the Roman symbol for sestertius, a coin made of bronze or brass. A Roman soldier was paid a stipend of HS900 a year (see Appendix 3.3 and 4). Four sestertii was the equivalent of a silver denarius and twenty-five denarii equated to a gold aureus.
The job of a historian is to research, analyze and interpret events and the people who took part in them by studying a variety of historical documents and sources, and then to present as accurate and unbiased an account – warts and all – of his subject as possible for the reader. The task of a writer is to make the story compelling reading. I hope I have succeeded both as a historian and a writer in this new book.
To the shades of Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus and the men who served with him, I present this book. Bene merenti fecit.
Lindsay Powell
Leap Day, 2016
Austin, Texas