Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [154]
It is hard to tell whether the two men reacted to circumstances as they arose or pursued a long-term strategy. The impression is given of an orderly progression in the years that followed Actium from one priority to another. As we have seen, the eastern provinces and client kingdoms were reorganized. The frontier of Egypt was pushed southward and contact was made with the Ethiopians. An attempt was made to conquer the Arabian Peninsula, which failed. The negotiations with the Parthians were brought to a successful conclusion. Gaul and Spain were pacified.
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