The Provinces of the Roman Empire 45

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 45

It was the arena of the wars with the Garamantes. Lucius Cornelius

Balbus, who in his younger years had fought and administered under

Caesar with the most adventurous boldness as well as with the

most cruel recklessness, was selected by Augustus to reduce these

inconvenient neighbours to quiet, and in his proconsulate (735) he

subdued the interior as far as Cidamus (Ghadames), twelve days’

journey inland from Tripolis, and Garama (Germa) in Fezzan;[280] at

his triumph--he was the last commoner who celebrated such an one--a

long series of towns and tribes, hitherto unknown even by name, were

displayed as vanquished. This expedition is named a conquest; and

so doubtless the foreland must have been thereby brought in some

measure under the Roman power. There was fighting subsequently on

many occasions in this region. Soon afterwards, still under Augustus,

Publius Sulpicius Quirinius made an expedition against the tribes of

Marmarica, that is, of the Libyan desert above Cyrene, and at the same

time against the Garamantes. That the war against Tacfarinas under

Tiberius extended also over this region will be mentioned further

on. After its termination the king of the Garamantes sent envoys to

Rome, to procure pardon for his having taken part in it. In the year

70 an irruption of the Garamantes into the pacified territory was

brought about by the circumstance that the town Oea (Tripoli) called

the barbarians to help the Tripolis in a quarrel, which had grown

into war, with the neighbouring town Great-Leptis (Lebda), whereupon

they were beaten back by the governor of Africa and pursued to their

own settlements. Under Domitian on the coast of the Great Syrtis,

which had been from of old held by the Nasamones, a revolt of the

natives provoked by the exorbitant taxes had to be repressed with

arms by the governor of Numidia; the territory already poor in men

was utterly depopulated by this cruelly conducted war. The emperor

Severus took conspicuous care of this his native province--he was from

Great-Leptis--and gave to it stronger military protection against the

neighbouring barbarians. With this we may bring into connection the

fact, that in the time from Severus to Alexander the nearest oases,

Cidamus (Ghadames), Gharia el Gharbia, Bonjem, were provided with

detachments of the African legion, which, it is true, owing to the

distance from the headquarters, could not be much more than a nucleus

for the probably considerable contingents of the subject tribes here

rendering services to the Romans. In fact the possession of these oases

was of importance not merely for the protection of the coast, but also

for the traffic, which at all times passed by way of these oases from

the interior of Africa to the harbours of Tripolis. It was not till

the time of decay that the possession of these advanced posts was

abandoned; in the description of the African wars under Valentinian

and Justinian we find the towns of the coast directly harassed by the

natives.

 

[Sidenote: The Africano-Numidian territory and army.]

 

The basis and core of Roman Africa was the province of that name,

including the Numidian, which was a branch from it. Roman civilisation

entered upon the heritage partly of the city of Carthage, partly of

the kings of Numidia, and if it here attained considerable results, it

may never be forgotten that it, properly speaking, merely wrote its

name and inscribed its language on what was already there. Besides the

towns, which were demonstrably founded by the former or by the latter,

and to which we shall still return, the former as well as the latter

led the Berber tribes, inclined at any rate to agriculture, towards

fixed settlements. Even in the time of Herodotus the Libyans westward

of the bay of Gabes were no longer nomads, but peacefully cultivated

the soil; and the Numidian rulers carried civilisation and agriculture

still farther into the interior. Nature, too, was here more favourable

for husbandry than in the western part of North Africa; the middle

depression between the northern and the southern range is indeed here

not quite absent, but the salt lakes and the steppe proper are less

extensive than in the two Mauretanias. The military arrangements were

chiefly designed to plant the troops in front of the mighty Aurasian

mountain-block, the Saint Gotthard of the southern frontier-range,

and to check the irruption of the non-subject tribes from the latter

into the pacified territory of Africa and Numidia. For that reason

Augustus placed the stationary quarters of the legion at Theveste

(Tebessa), on the high plateau between the Aures and the old province;

even to the north of it, between Ammaedara and Althiburus, Roman forts

existed in the first imperial period. Of the details of the warfare we

learn little; it must have been permanent, and must have consisted in

the constant repelling of the border-tribes, as well as in not less

constant pillaging raids into their territory.

 

[Sidenote: War against Tacfarinas.]

 

Only as to a single occurrence of this sort has information in some

measure accurate come to us; namely, as to the conflicts which derive

their name from the chief leader of the Berbers, Tacfarinas. They

assumed unusual proportions; they lasted eight years (17-24), and

the garrison of the province otherwise consisting of a legion was on

that account reinforced during the years 20-22 by a second despatched

thither from Pannonia. The war had its origin from the great tribe of

the Musulamii on the south slope of the Aures, against whom already

under Augustus Lentulus had conducted an expedition, and who now under

his successor chose that Tacfarinas as their leader. He was an African

Arminius, a native Numidian, who had served in the Roman army, but had

then deserted and made himself a name at the head of a band of robbers.

The insurrection extended eastwards as far as the Cinithii on the

Little Syrtis and the Garamantes in Fezzan, westwards over a great part

of Mauretania, and became dangerous through the fact that Tacfarinas

equipped a portion of his men after the Roman fashion on foot and on

horseback, and gave them Roman training; these gave steadiness to the

light bands of the insurgents, and rendered possible regular combats

and sieges. After long exertions, and after the senate had been on

several occasions induced to disregard the legally prescribed ballot in

filling up this important post of command, and to select fitting men

instead of the usual generals of the type of Cicero, Quintus Iunius

Blaesus in the first instance made an end of the insurrection by a

combined operation, inasmuch as he sent the left flank column against

the Garamantes, and with the right covered the outlets from the Aures

towards Cirta, while he advanced in person with the main army into the

territory of the Musulamii and permanently occupied it (year 22). But

the bold partisan soon afterwards renewed the struggle, and it was only

some years later that the proconsul Publius Cornelius Dolabella, after

he had nipped in the bud the threatened revolt of the just chastised

Musulamii by the execution of all the leaders, was able with the aid of

the troops of the king of Mauretania to force a battle in his territory

near Auzia (Aumale), in which Tacfarinas lost his life. With the fall

of the leader, as is usual in national wars of insurrection, this

movement had an end.[281]

 

[Sidenote: Later conflicts.]

 

From later times detailed accounts of a like kind are lacking; we

can only follow out in some measure the general course of the Roman

work of pacification. The tribes to the south of Aures were, if not

extirpated, at any rate ejected and transplanted into the northern

districts; so in particular the Musulamii themselves,[282] against

whom an expedition was once more conducted under Claudius. The demand

made by Tacfarinas to have settlements assigned to him and his people

within the civilised territory, to which Tiberius, as was reasonable,

only replied by redoubling his exertions to annihilate the daring

claimant, was supplementarily after a certain measure fulfilled in

this way, and probably contributed materially to the consolidation of

the Roman government. The camps more and more enclosed the Aurasian

mountain-block. The garrisons were pushed farther forward into the

interior; the headquarters themselves moved under Trajan away from

Theveste farther to the west; the three considerable Roman settlements

on the northern slope of the Aures, Mascula (Khenschela), at the egress

of the valley of the Arab and thereby the key to the Aures mountains, a

colony at least already under Marcus and Verus; Thamugadi, a foundation

of Trajan’s; and Lambaesis, after Hadrian’s day the headquarters of

the African army, formed together a settlement comparable to the great

military camps on the Rhine and on the Danube, which, laid out on the

lines of communication from the Aures to the great towns of the north

and the coast Cirta (Constantine), Calama (Gelma), and Hippo regius

(Bonah), secured the peace of the latter. The intervening steppe-land

was, so far as it could not be gained for cultivation, at least

intersected by secure routes of communication. On the west side of

the Aures a strongly occupied chain of posts which followed the slope

of the mountains from Lambaesis over the oases Calceus Herculis (el

Kantara) and Bescera (Beskra), cut off the connection with Mauretania.

Even the interior of the mountains subsequently became Roman; the war,

which was waged under the emperor Pius in Africa, and concerning

which we have not accurate information, must have brought the Aurasian

mountains into the power of the Romans. At that time a military road

was carried through these mountains by a legion doing garrison duty

in Syria and sent beyond doubt on account of this war to Africa, and

in later times we meet at that very spot traces of Roman garrisons

and even of Roman towns, which reach down to Christian times; the

Aurasian range had thus at that time been occupied, and continued to

be permanently occupied. The oasis Negrin, situated on its southern

slope, was even already under or before Trajan furnished by the Romans

with troops, and still somewhat farther southward on the extreme verge

of the steppe at Bir Mohammed ben Jûnis are found the ruins of a Roman

fort; a Roman road also ran along the southern base of this range.

Of the mighty slope which falls from the table-land of Theveste, the

watershed between the Mediterranean and the desert, in successive

stages of two to three hundred mètres down to the latter, this oasis

is the last terrace; at its base begins, in sharp contrast towards

the jagged mountains piled up behind, the sand desert of Suf, with

its yellow rows of dunes similar to waves, and the sandy soil moved

about by the wind, a huge wilderness, without elevation of the ground,

without trees, fading away without limit into the horizon. Negrin was

certainly of old, as it still is in our time, the standing rendezvous

and the last place of refuge of the robber chiefs as well as of the

natives defying foreign rule--a position commanding far and wide the

desert and its trading routes. Even to this extreme limit reached Roman

occupation and even Roman settlement in Numidia.

 

[Sidenote: Roman civilisation in Mauretania.]

 

Mauretania was not a heritage like Africa and Numidia. Of its earlier

condition we learn nothing; there cannot have been considerable towns

even on the coast here in earlier times, and neither Phoenician

stimulus nor sovereigns after the type of Massinissa effectively

promoted civilisation in this quarter. When his last descendants

exchanged the Numidian crown for the Mauretanian, the capital, which

changed its name Iol into Caesarea, became the residence of a

cultivated and luxurious court, and a seat of seafaring and of traffic.

But how much less this possession was esteemed by the government than

that of the neighbouring province, is shown by the difference of the

provincial organisation; the two Mauretanian armies were together not

inferior in number to the Africano-Numidian,[283] but here governors

of equestrian rank and imperial soldiers of the class of _peregrini_

sufficed. Caesarea remained a considerable commercial town; but in

the province the fixed settlement was restricted to the northern

mountain-range, and it was only in the eastern portion that larger

inland towns were to be found. Even the fertile valley of the most

considerable river of this province, the Shelîf, shows weak urban

development; further to the west in the valleys of the Tafna and the

Malua it almost wholly disappears, and the names of the divisions of

cavalry here stationed serve partly in place of local designations. The

province of Tingi (Tangier) even now embraced nothing but this town

with its immediate territory and the stripe of the coast along the

Atlantic Ocean as far as Sala, the modern Rebât, while in the interior

Roman settlement did not even reach to Fez. No land-route connects this

province with that of Caesarea; the 220 miles from Tingi to Rusaddir

(Melilla) they traversed by water, along the desolate and insubordinate

coast of the Riff. Consequently for this province the communication

with Baetica was nearer than that with Mauretania; and if subsequently,

when the empire was divided into larger administrative districts, the

province of Tingi fell to Spain, that measure was only the outward

carrying out of what in reality had long subsisted. It was for Baetica

what Germany was for Gaul; and, far from lucrative as it must have

been, it was perhaps instituted and retained for the reason that its

abandonment would even then have brought about an invasion of Spain

similar to that which Islam accomplished after the collapse of the Roman rule.