Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [180]
Augustus sent Tiberius to take over the Rhine command, to counter any German invasion of Gaul or even Italy, and to demonstrate that Rome’s military power was undiminished. At home he feared a popular uprising and sent military patrols around the city at night. Not trusting the Germans in his bodyguard, he sent them to various islands; he also deported the large Gallic and German community from the city. The terms of service of provincial governors were extended so that experienced men were in place to cope with any trouble.
The emergency exposed a serious potential weakness of Augustus’ military strategy. Ever since his victory over Antony and Cleopatra, he had set the empire’s military strength at twenty-eight legions, but this was only just sufficient to man the frontiers. There were no soldiers left over to form a mobile field army that could move quickly to a crisis point.
But the emergency soon passed. Arminius did not invade Gaul; Rome and the provinces remained tranquil. The indispensable Tiberius did what was required on the northeastern frontier, where he campaigned for three more years. However, he made no attempt to recover Germania as a Roman province, and the empire was never again to reach beyond the Rhine.
Had the regime really been at risk? Augustus’ alarm reflected an innate caution. But also, for all the sonorous rhetoric about the restored Republic, his power essentially depended not on constitutional legality but on the support of the army and the people. If that was withdrawn, his day would soon be done. And imperial success was essential to the regime’s popularity; indeed, the only event likely to shake the loyalty of either constituency was a major military defeat.
So it was reasonable to predict that the loss of three legions would entail serious political consequences. That it did not do so may owe something to the security measures that the princeps took, but is better seen as evidence that Augustus’ constitutional settlement was firmly established. No oppositional grouping existed that was ready and able to exploit the situation.
For all that, the Variana clades was a real and substantial setback, which provoked a strategic review behind closed doors on the Palatine. The aggressive plan to settle Germania up to the Elbe, which we may guess Agrippa and Augustus to have devised twenty years previously, was revoked. From now on the Rhine was to be the permanent boundary between Romanized Gaul and the barbarians of central Europe.
The change was rational, based on close observation of the realities in both Rome and Germany. Arminius’ failure to exploit his victory suggested that the Germans no longer presented a serious threat to the stability of Gaul, if they ever really had. As always, they were unable to combine in an alliance for any length of time. It simply was not worth going to the trouble and expense of reinstalling the province of Germania. Reconnoitering and occasional punitive expeditions would be enough to ward off any risk of attack.
In A.D. 12, the twenty-seven-year-old Germanicus held the consulship, but if there were expectations of a return to optimism they were disappointed. Although he was busy in the law courts, he achieved nothing of importance.
Augustus wrote a letter commending Germanicus to the Senate, and the Senate to Tiberius. His physical energy was waning and he did not read it out himself, for he could not make himself heard, but instead handed the document to Germanicus to read. Taking the war in Germany (now drawing to a close) as his excuse, he asked senators to forgo attending the morning salutatio at his house on the Palatine Hill, and not to feel offended if he no longer attended public banquets.
Natural disaster struck again: the Tiber burst its banks and the Circus Maximus was flooded. For the first time we hear of seditious literature being burned and the authors punished. Probably in this year, a well-known advocate