The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1Mommsen, Theodor
History
The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1
Mommsen, Theodor
Roman provinces -- Administration; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
Nevertheless, the work of the war was not easy; here, as everywhere,
the renewed overthrow of the subjects was more laborious than the
subjugation itself. Never in the Augustan period was such a body of
troops ever united under the same command; already in the first year of
the war the army of Tiberius consisted of ten legions along with the
corresponding auxiliary forces, and in addition numerous veterans who
had again joined of their own accord and other volunteers, together
about 120,000 men; later he had fifteen legions united under his
banners.[15] In the first campaign (6 A.D.) the contest was waged with
very varying fortune; the large places, like Siscia and Sirmium, were
successfully protected against the insurgents, but the Dalmatian Bato
fought as obstinately and in part successfully against the governor of
Pannonia, Marcus Valerius Messalla, the orator's son, as his Pannonian
namesake against Aulus Caecina governor of Moesia. The petty warfare
above all gave much trouble to the Roman troops. Nor did the following
year (7), in which along with Tiberius his nephew the young Germanicus
appeared on the scene of war, put an end to the ceaseless conflicts.
It was not till the third campaign (8) that the Romans succeeded in
subduing in the first instance the Pannonians, chiefly, as it would
seem, through the circumstance that their leader, gained over by the
Romans, induced his troops all and sundry to lay down their arms at
the river Bathinus, and surrendered his colleague in the supreme
command, Pinnes, to the Romans, for which he was recognised by them as
prince of the Breuci. Punishment indeed soon befell the traitor; his
Dalmatian namesake caught him and had him executed, and once more the
revolt blazed up among the Breuci; but it was speedily extinguished
again, and the Dalmatian was confined to the defence of his own home.
There Germanicus and other leaders of division had in this, as in
the following year (9), to sustain vehement conflicts in the several
cantons; in the latter year the Pirustae (on the borders of Epirus)
and the canton to which the leader himself belonged, the Daesitiatae,
were subdued, one bravely defended stronghold being reduced after
another. Once more in the course of the summer Tiberius himself took
the field, and set in motion all his fighting force against the remains
of the insurrection. Even Bato, shut up by the Roman army in the strong
Andetrium (Much, above Salonae), his last place of refuge, gave up
the cause as lost. He left the town, when he could not induce the
desperadoes to submit, and yielded himself to the victor, with whom he
found honourable treatment; he was relegated as a political prisoner
to Ravenna, where he died. Without their leader the troops still for
a time continued the vain struggle, till the Romans captured the fort
by assault--it is probably this day, the 3d August, that is recorded
in the Roman calendar as the anniversary of the victory achieved by
Tiberius in Illyricum.
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