Onward to the River Elbe
“Whither, pray, art thou hastening, insatiable Drusus? It is not fated that thou shalt look upon all these lands. But depart; for the end alike of thy labors and of thy life is already at hand.”1
Cassius Dio
Gaius Octavian (63 BC-AD 14) possessed none of his great-uncle Caesar’s charisma, natural leadership or soldierly qualities. And yet it was Octavian who became not only Rome’s first Emperor but also undeniably one of its best. Although handsome and bright-eyed, he suffered from ill health and neglected his personal appearance. Octavian commanded absolute power but he never abused it and lived a relatively modest life style. Octavian was a Republican at heart. His down to earth nature prevented the power he held from going to his head, and enabled Octavian to resolve problems in a practical manner and to delegate duties to capable individuals. Much of his success was based on good luck for he inherited Caesar’s fame and fortune and could count on the unwavering loyalty of his champion Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. An outstanding commander, Agrippa defeated the imperial aspirants Mark Antony and Cleopatra, at the fateful 31 BC battle of Actium, setting up Octavian as “Augustus”, the sole master of the Roman world.
The empire of Augustus’ time boasted a population of more than 50 million.2 Up to a million of them, including 200,000 slaves lived in Rome alone, most of them crowded into densely packed, dim and squalid, tenements. Rents were high, hunger, unemployment and crime rampant. But the bellies of the mob were kept satiated by free grain rations and their vulgar minds occupied by pompous triumphal marches, by the thrill of chariot races and by the bloodshed of the gladiatorial fights and beast hunts.
In contrast, the white-marbled limestone forums, temples, theaters and country villas of the upper class, reflected the spoils of war concentrated into the hands of a few. While the turmoil of the civil wars disturbed provincial manufacturing, it allowed wealthy Romans to acquire bargain real estate and cropland. Vast numbers of slaves toiled on the large estates. It was the first age of the Roman millionaires who, in stark contrast to their emperor, lived a life of unbridled opulence. Augustus was nevertheless the richest Roman of them all and it was he who carried out many of the startling building projects, monuments to Roman history and heroes, which graced the central area of the Eternal City. He boasted “I arrived in a city of brick and I created a city of marble.”3
Augustus maintained security in Rome through the Urban Cohorts and his creation, the imperial Praetorian Guard. Abroad, order was maintained by his iron legions on whose unwavering loyalty he depended. Both the Praetorians and the legions swore allegiance to Augustus and looked to him for their material rewards. Every year, every legion in mass assemblies renewed their oath to obey the emperor, to never desert and to be ready to sacrifice their lives for Rome. Discipline was fostered through a combination of unit pride and draconian punishment. A cohort that broke in battle drew lots; every tenth man was executed. Centurions who abandoned their posts shared the same fate. Lesser punishments included standing all day whilst carrying ten-foot poles or clods of earth. All legionaries continued to be heavy infantry but unlike in Caesar’s day, a contingent of 120 Roman cavalry had been added to each legion.4
During the civil wars the numbers of legions had grown to 60. Augustus brought the number back down to a more reasonable 28, closer to what they had been in Caesar’s day. This left Augustus with 250,000 to 300,000 soldiers equally divided between the legions and the auxiliaries. The auxiliaries were no longer the tribal irregulars but foreign troops organized and armed in the Roman manner, who would earn their citizenship after twenty-five years of service.
The legions and the auxiliaries guarded 4,000 miles of frontier, in addition to enforcing order within the provinces. Augustus knew well enough that idle legions, deprived of loot, could turn against him. Likewise, the spoils of war were what fed his popularity among the war-hungry Roman mob. War too, provided slaves to work the estates of the wealthy. The problem was that there were few lucrative lands left whose conquests justified the required military expenditure. Augustus faced the daunting task of maintaining stability in the provinces of his empire, keeping the loyalty of his legions, retaining his political clout among his peers and insuring the adoration of the Roman masses. He accomplished all these tasks by a wisely applied combination of diplomacy and military action that varied with each province.
Augustus nurtured friendly trade relations with Britannia. In North Africa, the flexing of Roman military muscle secured the wheat basket of the Empire. Roman military strikes cowed hostile Berber tribes, ensured peace with the Ethiopians and safeguarded the Indian and Somali trade routes from Ethiopian and Arabian threats. Augustus curbed Roman aggression in the Near East. A show of Roman power in Armenia sufficed to ensure Armenia’s subservience and to maintain peace with Parthia. Northern Spain, however, felt the full might of the Roman war machine, when Augustus finally conquered the area in a fierce war that lasted from 26 to 19 BC.
Although minor rebellions were put down in Aquitania in 39 and 30 BC, Gaul as a whole remained peaceful. Augustus divided Caesar’s conquests into three Imperial provinces. Gallia Aquitania bordered Spain, while Gallia Lugdunensis, the most Celtic of the three, was in the center. Gallia Belgica, with the sub districts of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior, ran along the left bank of the Rhine down to the Alps.
In 38 BC, the Germanic Ubii pleaded with Agrippa to be allowed to immigrate into Germania Inferior. There the Ubii would be safe from the feared Suebi. Agrippa knew well that the Ubii had been faithful friends of Rome for the past seventeen years, ever since they swore fealty to Caesar. He granted them settlement on the left bank of the lower Rhine. Their main town Oppidum Ubiorum, the future Cologne, served as an important Roman military base.
Although relative peace reigned for nine years, the barbarian Alps and Balkans, and the endless forests east of the Rhine, in Germania Magna, loomed over Gaul and northern Italy like some dark, fearsome cloud. Running north to south along the Rhine, and west to east along the Danube, the Roman border with the barbarian tribes formed a giant, triangular salient. It was here that Augustus’ legions would see their largest and hardest fought campaigns.
In 29 BC, the Roman army put down a rebellion by the Belgic Morini and arrested minor Suebi inroads across the Rhine. The Suebi prisoners ended up in the arena where they were pitched in battle against Dacian prisoners. The Dacians had the misfortune of having fought for the Roman enemies of Augustus in the last civil war. In the Danube lands, the legions repulsed the Bastarnae, a fierce Germanic-Celtic tribe from the eastern Carpathians, who raided across the Danube. A more serious foray occurred in 17 BC, when the Sugambri led by Melo, brother of Baetorix, defeated Marcus Lollius’ Fifth “Alauda” Legion and captured its Eagle. Melo’s victory marked the onset of continuous strife along the border. “Different peoples at different times would cause a breach, first growing powerful and then being put down, and then revolting again, betraying both the hostages they had given and their pledges of good faith,”5 noted Strabo.
It would not be Agrippa who would lead the legions of Augustus against the barbarian tribes. After bringing the war against the Spanish Cantabrians to an end in 19 BC, Agrippa went on to serve as governor of the eastern provinces. He was now in his forties and increasingly estranged from his old friend Augustus, whose jealous wife, the Empress Livia, resented Agrippa’s influence over her husband. It would be the sons of Livia by a former marriage who would become the new champions of Augustus. Fortunately for Augustus, his stepson Drusus Nero Claudius proved to be a capable commander and Roman hero. Not only that, but Drusus’ elder brother, Tiberius Claudius Nero, was no military slouch either, though, as shall be seen, of a very different character than Drusus. Conveniently, both stepsons had just reached the right age to take over command.
The first military test of the imperial princes was against the Rhaeti, an Illyrian Alpine people, who dwelt between Germania Superior and Noricum. The latter Celtic Kingdom had a very long tradition of friendship with Rome and in 16 BC peacefully accepted Roman provincial status. The Rhaeti, however, preyed on Roman travelers and plundered into Gaul and even into northern Italy. Allegedly, they killed all male prisoners. In 15 BC, the 23-year-old Drusus and his four years older brother Tiberius set off to deal with these troublemakers. The two Roman princes rampaged through the country and deported a large number of captured males. The area became the new province of Rhaetia. In honor of the Roman victories the Senate financed the building of a gigantic 150-foot tall monument on the Mediterranean coastal road between Italy and Spain. A bronze statue of Augustus stood on top with captive figures at his feet.
East of Noricum lay Pannonia (roughly Slovenia and Croatia), inhabited by a mix of mostly Illyrians and a few Celts and Thracians. They had a habit of wearing apparel called panus or patch, made up of strips of cloth. Centuries later, many of Rome’s most formidable emperors would hail from the area. In the late days of the Republic and early days of the Empire, however, the Pannonians were more of a scourge to Rome. Already in 35 BC, Augustus skirmished with Pannonian bandits.
Now Augustus decided on a full Pannonian conquest. Despite his stepsons’ success in Rhaetia, Augustus at first gave the Pannonian command to his old champion Agrippa. The Fates however, decreed otherwise when Agrippa succumbed to an illness. Agrippa had been a man of impeccable morals. Never once had he been a source of scandal in a city infamous for it. Loyal Agrippa symbolized the Rome of an earlier age.
It was a time for Drusus and Tiberius to further show their worth. Tiberius accordingly assumed command in Pannonia, subduing the tribes in a tough war from 12 to 8 BC. While Tiberius did his best in Pannonia, Augustus entrusted a more prestigious task to Drusus. The Emperor much preferred the dashing Drusus to his brooding, tongue-tied brother. Unlike Tiberius, who opposed any major operations across the Rhine, Drusus urged the conquest of the German tribes. Inspired by Drusus, Augustus figured that if the Roman frontier was pushed east to the River Elbe (the Albis), it would be shortened and the security of Gaul and Italy assured.
The conquest of the Germanic tribes would also ensure more slaves for the markets of Rome and open a vast reservoir of the vital commodity of timber. By the first century AD, Italy was already nearly stripped bare of its accessible forest and most of the timber was imported. Much of the wood fed the fires of Roman metallurgic industries. Due to lack of wood for charcoal, these industries increasingly moved to areas outside of Italy. Wherever they went the land was deforested. More wood was to be consumed by the empire’s growing number of public thermal baths, where beneath the floors giant fires burnt day and night, heating the water to 37 degree Celsius.6
The Roman naturalist and philosopher, Pliny the elder, held the forests of Germania in awe: “gigantic oaks, uninjured by the lapse of ages, and contemporary with the creation of the world, by their near approach to immortality surpass all other marvels known.”7 The Germanic tribes were a materially poor people, but the Romans would profit from the people themselves and from the land.
Just as Gaul had done for Caesar, the conquest of Germania would solidify Drusus’ renown in the Empire. The legions adored Drusus and they were ready. So was Drusus. Long ago, in 283 BC, the first Drusus gained his surname by slaying a Gallic chieftain named Drausus. Drusus Nero Claudius likewise was eager to slay a German chieftain in single combat and win his foe’s armor, the “Noblest Spoils”.8
In 13 BC, Drusus prepared Gaul against German counter raids by building a line of fifty wooden forts along the Rhine, the two major ones at Vetera (Xanten) and, covering 90 acres, at Moguntiacum (Mainz). In later ages these forts, often situated at older Celtic settlements, grew into the most famous towns along the Rhine, including Bingen, Spires, Worms and Strassburg. In 12 BC, the Sugambri again invaded Germania Inferior. Drusus drove them back across the Rhine and devastated their villages. He was now ready to launch the first stage of his conquest, which was to establish Roman supremacy along the North Sea coast and thereby isolate the interior tribes from their coastal resources.
Sailing down the Rhine, he dug a series of canals, the fossa Drusiana, connecting the river with Lake Flevo and the North Sea. At the time the lake was part of a series of lowlands, lakes and channels that now lie submerged beneath the Ijsselmeer.9 The route through Flevo allowed Drusus to shorten the distance his flotilla had to travel along the more treacherous North Sea coast. The Roman ships headed east toward the mouth of the River Ems (the Amisia). In lagoons along the way, Drusus visited the villages of the Frisii.
In typical Germanic fashion, the Frisii dwelt in rectangular longhouses, with walls of mud and wood and thatched roofs. A new recruit among Drusus’ bodyguard might have reflected how differently the German tribes lived compared to his own Latin people. Unlike the Romans, the Frisii built each house separated from all the others. Not only that but the Frisii, as was common for all the tribes, shared their home with their livestock, albeit in separate quarters. Then again, the young recruit’s eyes might have wandered to some fair Frisii maidens among the crowd of bearded men, who along with their wives and their naked, dirty children, gathered to see the Roman visitors. The local maidens let their hair fall loose, to signify their unmarried status. For such important visitors, they must have donned their most beautiful, ornately woven, crimson and purple garments. Drusus, for his part, had little time to dwell on local maidens while he finished his fruitful negotiations. The Frisii did not seek war and readily submitted to Drusus. A seafaring people, they saw in Rome a lucrative trading partner. In return for their goodwill, Drusus made the Frisii pay only a paltry tribute of hides.
From the River Ems it was off to the mouth of the River Weser (the Visurgis). Here the ebb of the ocean stranded the Roman fleet. The area was Chauci territory. Though known for fair play and not for aggression, the Chauci were quite ready to defend their lands. Drusus would have been in trouble if not for the Frisii, who came to his aid with their infantry. Possibly he built forts at both the River Ems and the Weser mouths, before withdrawing for the winter and heading back to Rome.
In 11 BC, Drusus returned to subjugate the Usipetes and thereafter ventured up the fertile valley of the River Lippe (the Lupia). His route took him through Sugambri lands and as far as Cherusci territory on the banks of the Weser. Unlike Caesar, whose incursions barely penetrated the lands east of the Rhine, Drusus had ventured far into the hinterland. The philosopher Seneca the Younger went so far as to claim that “Drusus set up military standards where the people did not even know Rome existed.”10 Seneca’s words highlight the sense of the remoteness into which Drusus had ventured. Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that even the most distant Germanic tribes did not at least hear of Rome. Tales of Caesar’s war with the Gauls and Germans were likely told in song and verse. Indeed, it was Caesar’s conquest of Gaul that had forced many Germanic tribes to abandon their movements to the west. As a result the Germans encountered by Drusus had become more settled than they were in Caesar’s day and had become almost entirely dependent on agriculture.
Villagers gathered in astonishment and apprehension, as heralds reported of an approaching mighty army of armored infantry, accompanied by a great host of cavalry. At the sight of Drusus’ cavalry, women and slaves working in the field or tending cattle fled to their longhouses. The villages, clusters of houses, lay scattered around fields of cleared forest, where cattle roamed and grain blew in the wind. The cleared land surrounded patches of woodland, where Drusus’ legionaries may have come upon holy groves. To the Romans, such places were filled with dreadful, unfamiliar gods and spirits. Here the tribes ritually butchered and ate cattle and horses. Skulls and extremities of the animals were left as offerings to Nerthus, mother earth, in hopes that she would bless the land with fertility. Strange pillar idols to represent the Germanic gods, stylistically endowed with male or female genitals, ominously leered down upon the Romans.
So far, there was no real opposition to the Roman invaders. The Sugambri were busy making war on the Chatti, who refused to join a Sugambri-Cherusci alliance against Rome. The Cherusci retreated into their woods to assemble their army. Drusus, like Caesar before him, was unable to confiscate sufficient grain from the tribal farms to feed his legions. Even though the tribes tilled the soil, their population density remained very low. The patchworks of farmsteads, woods and fields of cleared land, remained surrounded by vast wilderness areas. Short on provisions, Drusus was forced to return to the Rhine. On the way he was attacked by the Cherusci who relentlessly harried the Roman columns, nearly eliminating the legions in a defile. But when the barbarians pressed in for the kill too soon, the legions hit them hard and thereafter the Germans dared little more than petty annoyances.
Drusus established a fort at Oberaden, just south of the Lippe, in Sugambri lands, and another fort among the Chatti, on the banks of the Rhine. The camp at Oberaden held no less than three of Drusus’ legions. There the soldiers, who hailed from northern Italy and from Gallia Narbonensis, enjoyed some of the luxuries of Roman civilization. Figs and olives were imported from the Mediterranean, and even pepper, originating all the way from India. Drusus returned to Rome, riding into the city on horseback to celebrate his latest triumphs.
On his return to Moguntiacum in 10 BC, Drusus headed up the Lahn valley. Here he fought the Chatti, who had been subjugated by the Sugambri. Tacitus described them as a nation “distinguished by hardy bodies, well-knit limbs, fierce countenances and unusual mental vigor.”11 Their strength was in their infantry and they were among the most disciplined of the Germans. Among them the legionaries encountered young men, whose beards and hair had never been cut, for it was their custom to stay unshorn until they had killed their first enemy. Weakened by their recent war with the Sugambri, the Chatti valor was not enough to defeat Drusus, who brought them under Roman control. As a reward, Drusus became an honorary Imperator and received his first consulship.
The next summer, in 9 BC, Drusus undertook his most ambitious campaign. From Moguntiacum he marched over Chatti lands and squared off, indecisively, with the powerful Marcomanni in the River Main valley. Shortly thereafter, Augustus sent a Suebi noble, Maroboduus, to win over the Marcomanni as a client state. Maroboduus had been but a child when he was given to the Emperor as a hostage after the reduction of the Rhaeti. Growing up at the Imperial court, he keenly absorbed Roman ways, especially those pertaining to warfare. Just as Augustus hoped, the Marcomanni accepted Maroboduus as their king.
Drusus pillaged the Cherusci to the north. He crossed the Werrer, a headstream of the Weser, at the ford of Hedemünden,12 establishing a fort, and from there advanced all the way to the Elbe. Time and time again, Drusus partook in personal combat but his wish to slay a chieftain was to remain unfulfilled. What happened next is shrouded in mystery and legend. He was just about to cross the Elbe when a giant woman appeared and spoke to him, “Whither, pray, art thou hastening, insatiable Drusus? It is not fated that thou shalt look upon all these lands. But depart; for the end alike of thy labors and of thy life is already at hand.”13 Unnerved, Drusus turned from the Elbe and crossing its western tributary, the Saale, hastened back to the Rhine. Wolves howled and prowled around his camp at night. Someone heard a woman lamenting and there were shooting stars. According to one tale Drusus was thrown off his horse, in another he contracted a disease. Whatever happened, he died after suffering for thirty days.
Tiberius received the news of his brother’s accident while at Ticinum on the River Po. Tiberius immediately mounted a horse and galloped off to the Rhine. He reached his beloved brother just before Drusus breathed his last. Tiberius accompanied Drusus’ body, walking in front of it, all the way back to Rome. Drusus’ body was fittingly cremated on the Campus Martius, the plains of Mars, god of war. For his victories in Germania, Drusus and his descendants were bestowed with the honorary title of Germanicus. Back at Moguntiacum the troops erected a 64-foot high cylindrical monument to Drusus, overlooking the Rhine.
Tiberius assumed Drusus’ command of the Rhine army. The German tribes sent envoys to Augustus, who remained nearby in Roman territory to keep an eye on his stepson. Augustus rejected all the peace offers from the German tribes, unless the Sugambri yielded as well. Possibly in wrath over Drusus’ death he imprisoned the Sugambri envoys, who took their own lives in despair. Between 9 and 7 BC, Tiberius took 40,000 Sugambri prisoners. The men, women and children were settled on the western side of the Rhine, leaving only a remnant in their homeland.14 During this time, the Romans pulled back from their fort on the Werrer at Hedemünden. The military camp at Oberaden was likewise abandoned, though a new and better camp was built, 20 miles further westward, at Aliso (Haltern).15 The new camp was built on the slopes of Silver Mountain. Merchant ships from Gaul docked in its port and wharves on the banks of the Lippe. Unlike Drusus’ temporary camp at Oberaden, which held three legions, the 19-hectare fortress at Haltern was only large enough for one legion, the Nineteenth. However, the Haltern fortress was a more permanent settlement, fortified with a masonry wall and surrounded by a double ditch. It even included a sewer system.
In 6 BC, Tiberius retired to his private retreat on Rhodes. Augustus had forced Tiberius to divorce his wife, Agrippina, in favor of Julia, the daughter of Augustus. The problem was that Tiberius loved his wife and hated Julia. Coupled with Augustus’ continuing lack of faith in him, Tiberius’ troubled love life dragged his mind into a mire of depression.
Tiberius’ replacement in Germania was the arrogant Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, whose wild animal hunts and gladiatorial fights were so cruel that they warranted a cautionary edit from the emperor. In 3 BC, Ahenobarbus built a wooden causeway, the ‘Long Bridges’, through a swamp between the Rhine and the Ems, and led a Roman campaign up to and across the Elbe. He marked the crossing with an altar to Augustus. As usual however, the campaign had no permanent results. The next year the Cherusci were back up in arms against the Romans. Overall though, the Roman legates did their best to encourage good relations with the tribes. The political climate remained relatively subdued until AD 4, when minor revolts prompted the return of Tiberius.
Tiberius suppressed the Bructeri, a tribe living north of the River Lippe. He subjugated the Cherusci, the most powerful German tribe outside of the Marcomanni and Suebi. After winning the allegiance of the Cherusci nobility, he gave their tribe the status of a federated state within the Empire. Unlike Drusus in his prior campaigns, Tiberius did not return to the Rhine that year. He quartered a Roman army in the middle of Germany at a new fort at Anreppen. The next year saw Tiberius reach the lower Elbe. Aided by supplies brought in by sea, he established Roman supremacy over the Chauci and Langobardi. From the north of the Elbe, from the Charudes and from the remnants of the Cimbri, came tribal envoys bearing words of friendship. The Cimbri even presented their most treasured cauldron as a gift to Augustus.
Altogether, the conquest of the Germanic tribes, who had so long terrorized Gaul and even threatened Rome in the past, was proceeding without any major mishaps or even any major engagements. Yet the Roman forts remained isolated in the midst of vast untamed forests and swamps. From out of the wilderness, tribesmen trickled in to visit the Roman towns and markets and there was a great deal of trade going on. The Germans traded food, local pottery and furs, for Roman glass beads, jewelry and pottery. The blond hair of the German women too was eagerly sought after by fashionable, wealthy, Roman women. The Romans felt secure enough to establish entire towns east of the Rhine, one of which was discovered on the outskirts of the modern village of Waldgermis on the River Lahn. Founded in 4 BC, the town was laid out in the Roman pattern, with a forum, bath houses, flowering gardens and atriums. A gilded bronze statue of the divine Augustus mounted on a horse served as a reminder of the Empire’s omnipotence. Farther west, on the Rhine, at Oppidum Ubiorum, a Germanic priest worshipped at Augustus’ altar. The altar looked out toward Germania, where its chieftains likewise honored the Emperor. It was their sons who held command over the Roman auxiliaries. The Germans were being conquered and assimilated into the Empire without even realizing it. It all went too easy, much too easy.
The problem was that the Romans considered the Germans conquered but not all the Germans considered themselves conquered. After all, what exactly did the Romans conquer? In Gaul, Caesar was at his most successful when he captured enemy strongholds. When he burnt and looted the countryside and the natives scattered into their wilderness hideouts, he rarely achieved lasting victory. In Germania, which was much less civilized that Gaul, there were no large urban centers or strongholds to capture and all Drusus and Tiberius could do was to march around in a demonstration of Roman power. The roads, if any were available, were much poorer than in Gaul and the terrain more difficult. Campaigns, Roman forts and towns were usually confined to river valleys and along the coast, where supplies could be brought by ships. Many interior villages probably remained relatively unaffected by the Roman demonstrations.
Ranke and Delbrück have also suggested that many German tribes saw the Romans not as conquerors but rather as allies against a potential mutual threat, Maroboduus, the new King of the Marcomanni. Maroboduus had taken his people from the Main valley to Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), where he absorbed or displaced Rome’s old foes the Boii. There, in the footsteps of Ariovistus, Maroboduus forged a powerful Germanic kingdom. A large part of the mighty Suebi federation, which had given Caesar such trouble, went over to his side. Maroboduus extended his sway to the upper Elbe. He drilled his 75,000 warriors with Roman type discipline and armed them in the Roman way.
Although there is every indication that Maroboduus desired friendly relations with Rome, his realm remained a thorn in the new Roman frontier line. Maroboduus’ kingdom formed a potentially highly dangerous salient between the upper Elbe and Rhaetia. In AD 6, Tiberius advanced on Maroboduus with no less than twelve legions plus auxiliaries. But before Tiberius’ legions clashed with Maroboduus’ tribesmen, a serious rebellion broke out in Pannonia that spilled over into the Roman province of Illyricum. The ostensible reason was forced recruitment among the Pannonians. Tiberius and his legions left to deal with the insurrection. Maroboduus was only too happy to agree to Roman terms and in turn be recognized as King and friend of the Roman people.
When rumors spread that the Pannonian rebels numbered over 200,000 and that some of them were moving on Italy, even Augustus was thrown into a panic. In Rome there were no reserves left to stop such an army and no recruits could be found to raise new legions. In desperation, Augustus requisitioned slaves from the wealthy, granting the slaves freedom in return for military service. The freemen ‘volunteer’ cohorts temporarily buffered the Illyrian defense. More substantial reinforcements arrived in AD 7, bringing the army of Tiberius up to an astonishing 100,000 men. With such incomparable might at his disposal, Tiberius crushed the Pannonian insurrection in two brutal campaigns. Germanicus Julius Caesar, the 24-year-old son of Drusus, fought at the side of Tiberius, subduing the Illyrians in AD 9. Thereafter, Pannonia became a separate province while Illyricum was renamed Dalmatia.
Even through all the turmoil of the Pannonian war, the Germans remained peaceful. They were watching, however, and the bravery of the Pannonians made them ponder and think. And when a new governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, arrived in Germany, their thoughts bore crimson fruit.