Dreams of Augustus: The Story of the Roman Empire Page 4

  The Romans were excellent negotiators. Time and again they were able to avoid fights altogether by creating client states through the use of various carrots and sticks. When Roman diplomacy was at its best, Rome's potential enemies simply battled it out with one another. The reason the Roman Empire's European borders remained so stable for so long was because of this kind of effective diplomacy.

  The conquest of Britain was a gradual process that took decades, and even then it was incomplete. England was the easiest to conquer, however Wales and Scotland were an entirely different manner. As the English kings who tried to unify Britain would find out, it is very hard to find an army that wants to be hidden in these areas. Time and again a Roman army would march into Wales and only find women and children waiting for them. As they roamed around, the men would only appear during ambushes and acts of sabotage.

  Nevertheless, through the patient use of diplomacy and force, the Roman presence in Wales grew in size. The Roman army was a remarkable fighting machine and an equally remarkable building machine. Roads, forts and impressive war machines could be constructed rapidly. Miles and miles of territory could be occupied quickly from the kind of defenses that the Romans would create. Over time, as more and more Roman forts and roads popped up, it became increasingly clear who was in charge.

  That being the case, things did go wrong. In 60, the Romans came very close to being driven off the island. Following the first Roman advances, the leader of the Icini tribe in eastern Britain, Prasutagus, decided to ally himself with the Romans. For the remainder of his life, the Romans honored this agreement. However, the Romans expected that after his death, his kingdom would be left to the Romans in his will. Therefore, when Prasutagus died, the Romans immediately confiscated his wealth and land. The tribe's women were seen as being included in this inheritance.

  For Prasutagus' wife, Boudica, the treatment after his death was particularly horrible. While she was flogged, she was forced to watch in horror as both of her daughters were raped by Roman soldiers. Completely stripped of her wealth and dignity, she pledged revenge. Soon enough, she had the whole of eastern England in revolt. This was an area that was considered safely in Roman hands. To the governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, it was an alarming development.

  When the Romans responded, Boudica's warriors wiped out an entire legion. Suetonius raced east from Wales to a bustling new town near the Thames River called Londinium. Founded shortly after the initial landings in 43, Londinium had developed into a thriving commercial center, and Suetonius was tempted to make his stand there. In the end, however, Suetonius realized that he could not defend the town without his full army. Londinium was burnt to the ground by Boudica's horde.

  Nobody was spared. Anyone who was a Roman or even suspected of being on friendly terms with the Romans was impaled. Roman town after Roman town was thoroughly destroyed. Back in Rome, the emperor Nero strongly considered withdrawing all Roman forces from Britain.

  In this hour of desperation, Suetonius rallied all the Roman forces that he could and assembled his army where they could best succeed: an open plain with space to move.

  While Boudica's forces sharply outnumbered those of Suetonius, the Romans had the discipline and tactics that erased any advantage that numbers would have given an opponent. These soldiers were trained to maneuver as a unit. A cohesive command structure was in place and clear signals (usually trumpets) were given to perform maneuvers that had been practiced extensively. Individually, legionnaires were trained to avoid wild swings with their swords. Instead, they were trained to parry the attacker's swing with their massive shield and then stab the attacker's side, which would be exposed from the swing. If any blows got through, they had armor that covered most of the body.

  In this battle, the Roman legions demonstrated why they had conquered the greatest empire of the ancient world. As the front line held their ground against a determined assault, javelins and arrows decimated rebel lines. Then the Romans advanced in a tight wedge formation, which pushed the rebels back into their wagon train (they had brought their families along). With no way out for the rebels, a massacre followed.

  Whether by suicide or by illness, Boudica died soon after the battle. Her rebellion had driven the Romans into desperate straits, but ultimately she suffered the same fate as the Carthaginians, Greeks, Syrians and countless others had who dared defy the power of Rome.

  Over the coming decades, Britain became a pacified Roman province. Even Wales submitted. When security was established, the same process of Romanization that occurred in every other area of the empire occurred in Britain. While Britain would retain its own distinct culture, it would get its cities and public works.

  Roman Britain was the great legacy of Claudius, yet that legacy was a mixed one. Beyond the suffering that the invasion caused, Britain would be a constant drain on the Empire's energies. While a Roman governor named Agricola defeated the armies of Scotland and even reached the northern tip of the island, Scotland was never conquered. Thousands of troops had to be stationed in Britain, and these troops were the most mutinous of all because Britain's remoteness meant that it was the most often neglected.

  Nevertheless, Britain was the last substantial conquest of the Roman Empire that would hold. It showcased some of the best in Roman military ingenuity along with some of the worst in Roman manipulation and brutality. To those that benefited from its rule, and there were many, it was a great achievement.

  A portrait of Boudica speaking to the Britons.

  8

  Nero

  It is a great testament to the institutional strength of the empire built by Augustus that the Roman Empire was able to thrive in spite of being led by a stupid, borderline psychopathic man for over a decade.

  When Nero succeeded his great-uncle Claudius in 54, he was only 17. Like Caligula, he had grown up in luxury and had developed a collosal ego. The conquest of Britain was in full swing and tensions were building in the east with Parthia. Nero himself had little interest in these things; he was much more passionate about the finer things in life. While Nero attended to his lyre, his mother Agrippina and the competent advisers that surrounded her attended to the affairs of state.

  Agrippina was very much in the tradition of Livia. An ambitious woman, she used her son to act as the de facto ruler of the empire. Some say that she even killed Claudius in order to speed up her son's ascension to the throne. Unfortunately for Agrippina and the empire, Nero's reaction to his overbearing mother was not to retreat into isolation.

  Nero was a teenager, and teenagers tend to resent their parent's overbearing influence over them. Unlike most teens, however, Nero was the emperor of Rome and could do whatever he wanted to do. To assert his independence, Nero dismissed members in court that were loyal to his mother. Agrippina, unlike most mothers, reacted to her son's antics by plotting to kill his career prospects by putting the 15 year old son of Claudius, a boy by the name of Brittanicus, on the throne. For this to realistically happen, Agrippina would have to kill her own son. Nero's response was to hire someone to poison the poor boy.

  In 58, Nero began having an affair with the wife of the future emperor Otho. The woman's name was Poppaea, and Nero wanted to marry her. The problem was that both of them were already married; Nero had been married to the daughter of Claudius, Octavia, for five years. Agrippina strongly opposed her son divorcing Octavia. Nero was further irritated when he learned that Agrippina was once again plotting to put another man on the throne.

  At first, Nero took the approach of getting his mother out of politics. Agrippina was stripped of her bodyguard, sent to the countryside and bombarded with hecklers. After a while, Nero decided that she had to die. He tried poisoning her on three separate occasions, however Agrippina was on guard for such attempts and had antidotes on hand. Nero then tried collapsing the ceiling above her bed while she was asleep, but she was alerted to this and slept on a different bed.

  Frustrated, Nero invited his mother to an island ostensibly to reconcile. He sabotaged the boat that she took back so that it would sink in the middle of the sea. However, Nero didn't know all that much about his mother and was horrified to learn that she was an excellent swimmer. When the exhausted Agrippina reached the shore, she was met by a group of admirers. Soon enough Nero's bodyguards showed up and stabbed Agrippina to death.

  Agrippina's inability to die was only matched over 1800 years later by a creepy, womanizing Russian mystic named Rasputin. Look it up.

  Nero is said to have been deeply troubled by the murder of his mother, but it did not restrain him from murdering other family members. At one point he decided to kill his aunt. She was bedridden by constipation, and when Nero visited her she told him that she would die a happy woman if only her nephew would shave his accursed beard (Nero had an ugly beard). Nero proceeded to shave and, upon delighting his aunt with the surprise, gave her a strong laxative that ended her life.

  A bust of Nero featuring his ugly beard.

  After divorcing and exiling Octavia on charges of adultery, Nero married his beloved Poppaea. The public was none too happy about the humiliation of Octavia, so Nero called her back to Rome and had her killed. The new marriage didn't end much better. A couple of years after the murder of Octavia, a pregnant Poppaea was kicked to death by Nero. This action, probably done in a moment of uncontrolled emotion, left Nero devastated. When Nero later found a boy that resembled Poppaea, he had the boy castrated and had sex with him like he was a woman.

  More than anything else, Nero loved his art. He performed poetry and music in front of audiences and even competed (shockingly, he always won). It was forbidden for anyone to leave during his performances, and it is said that women even gave birth to children during some of them. Vespasian, who we mentioned earlier, even claimed that he was banished from Nero's court because he fell asleep during one of Nero's performances.

  Nero eventually developed a love of chariot racing, and so went to Greece to participate in a race at the Olympic Games. In spite of falling off his chariot twice, he won the race.

  An emperor performing in public like this was akin to the president of the United States acting in a pornographic film. It was absolutely repulsive to the upper classes in Rome.

  The defining moment in Nero's reign was a great fire that devastated Rome in 64. Rome itself was ripe for such a disaster. Its population was close to a million people and its wooden buildings were separated by narrow streets. The Roman fire service was pretty primitive, so once a fire got going, it would be impossible to control. Indeed, this is exactly what happened; only four of the fourteen districts of the city escaped the inferno.

  While Nero was a disaster as an emperor, it is important to credit him for his rare display of courage. Contrary to the typical image of Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burnt, it seems as if Nero rushed back to Rome from his country estate and led a very aggressive relief effort that was paid for with his own money. Where Nero failed, however, was in his response to the disaster.

  Inevitably, there were rumors circling that Nero himself had been responsible for the catastrophe. In response, Nero sought out a scapegoat, and one particular cult from the east fit his needs perfectly. According to the classical historian Tacitus:

  Nero fastened the guilt of starting the blaze and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

  It was the first example of the Roman Empire persecuting Christians, and it would certainly not be the last. We will return to these Christians later.

  Early anti-Christian graffiti found in Rome. It depicts a man with the head of a donkey being crucified and says “Alexamenos worships his god.”

  Nero's response to the devastation was to initiate a massive reconstruction program. As a man who had spent a lifetime in the passionate pursuit of art and beauty, his vision was ambitious. In fact, it was a little too ambitious. The construction of elaborate palaces and a giant copper statue of himself was widely seen as being a colossal waste of money. He pushed for too much too quickly, and the Empire's finances began to feel the pinch. Soon taxes had to be raised, and when this wasn't enough, tactics resembling those taken by Caligula were employed.

  By 65, a growing number of senators had had enough with their emperor. A prominent statesman named Gaius Piso organized a conspiracy of some prominent officials to kill Nero. Unfortunately for the would-be assassins, far too many people were in on the plan, and a slave of one of the conspirators notified imperial authorities. As you would expect, Nero's response was a wave of terror.

  So it was that as the Roman Empire entered the year 66, it had been led by a man whose behavior and actions bordered on insanity for twelve years. Nevertheless, the Empire remained as strong as ever. The Parthians were kept at bay and an honorable peace ensured that the critical eastern provinces were safe. The Rhine and Danube frontiers were stable and Boudica's rebellion had been put down in Britain. The financial crises was a big deal, however Nero's brutal revenue-raising efforts only affected the people in the Roman Empire that had money, and this was most definitely not the rank and file. Indeed, outside of Rome, Nero was very popular.

  Nevertheless, Nero was hated by too many people, and it was obvious that his time was up. As the conspiracy against Nero matured, events in the land where the recently persecuted Christians had come from were coming to a head. The conflict that followed would give the Romans a new emperor and would doom a people who desired their freedom more than anyone else within the Empire.

  9

  Rebellion in the East

  The idea of a Jewish state extends back for thousands of years. The troubles that have faced the Jewish people it in recent years are not unique in their long history. Palestine, known back then to the Romans as Judea, is perfectly situated on the crossroads between Egypt, Mesopotamia and Turkey. These are all areas where great empires have risen from, and Palestine was usually caught in their expansions.

  The Roman Empire was the next in a line of conquerors that included the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians and Seleucians. It had enjoyed brief periods of independence, but these never lasted for very long. For a people who believed that they had been given this land by God, foreign domination was a very difficult thing to accept.

  Naturally, the idea of rising up against the Romans en masse was a popular idea. Some in Judea believed that a messiah would appear and lead such an enterprise. The Romans, of course, were keen to end the lives of people claiming to be a messiah so as not to get the Jewish people too

  uppity. One such man, Jesus Christ, was executed during the reign of Tiberius on such accusations.

  Jesus, however, had a devoted group of followers to spread his teachings. They were known as the apostles, and they believed that Jesus was the son of God. Their belief was so strong that most ended up dying because of this belief. Because they died for their faith, they are known as the first martyrs.

  The apostles started a sort of 'Jesus Movement' within the Jewish community that warned about the impending apocalypse. In spite of a strong backlash, the Jesus Movement gained some converts in Palestine and in various areas around the Mediterranean. Over time, the Jesus Movement would find itself in conflict with Judaism until it became a religion in its own right: Christianity.

  Unlike Judaism, Christianity was a missionary religion, meaning its followers attempted to convert others to the faith. The most famous of these early missionaries was Paul, who transformed from a persecutor of Christians to its most committed messenger. Because of the efforts of men like Paul, by 64 there were enough Christians in distant Rome for the emperor Nero to instigate a persecution.

  As the Christians made contact with Greeks and other peoples around the Mediterranean, it had to adapt. For example, the Greeks were not too keen on cutting off parts of their penises in order to become Jewish. In order to attract Greeks to their cause, the Christians dropped circumcision as a requirement to join.

  Many Christians were willing to die for their beliefs. In arenas all across the Empire, hundreds of Christians were martyred. Sometimes, they were fed to lions. It was an impressive display of faith that generated both sympathy and converts.

  The early Christian movement was not a centralized movement. As little Christian communities sprung up throughout the Empire, they developed their own beliefs in what the true message of Jesus was and even their own holy texts. This diversity would become problematic when Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire centuries later.

  During the time of Nero, the Christian's belief in the impending end of the world seemed to move from prophesy to reality for the Jews. A terrible governor was appointed by Nero, and he drove the Jews into revolt. In 66, beginning with riots in Caesarea, a full scale revolution drove out the Roman governor after most of the Roman garrison in Palestine was massacred.