057 - Germanicus

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 57, Germanicus. Surprise bonus Friday edition, I'm hopping on a plane tomorrow to visit the History of Roman Laws, and since I just took a week off, I figured it would be pretty poor form to ditch out again, so here we are.

The transition from Augustus to Tiberius went smoothly in Rome itself. The now utterly sycophantic senate was quick to embrace their new emperor. But beyond the capital, out on the frontiers, the death of Augustus led to immediate unrest in a far more important body than the increasingly irrelevant senate, the legions. It was not so much that the death of the princeps incited revolutionary spirits, so much as a few rabble-rousing common soldiers saw an opportunity to agitate for better conditions and make sure that certain promises made to them by Augustus were not ignored by Tiberius. The new emperor needed to secure the goodwill of the armies if he wanted to rule, right? So why not push him a little early in the game, and threaten to crash his new regime into the ground if he didn't give them what they wanted? The mutinies of 14 AD would be a key early test of Tiberius' rule. Would he reveal himself to be nothing more than a cheap imitation of Augustus, or would he be able to rule in his own right?

There were more than a few who did not believe that the imperial regime would be able to survive beyond Augustus, that the dead princeps possessed a singular quality that allowed him to rule unopposed. Once he was gone, the regime would collapse and the republic would be restored. But Tiberius proved to be stronger and much more capable than anyone had given him credit for, and the opposition to the regime proved thinner and weaker than most people had hoped. Tacitus notes that the transition was eased by the sheer length of Augustan rule. After 44 years in power, only the very old had a clear memory of what it was like to live before the Caesars took over. For the middle-aged and the young, it was perfectly natural to be ruled by a single man, whoever he turned out to be. Life was pretty good, the empire was prosperous, the civil wars were over, what was the big deal? There was still a senate, it still had responsibilities, there were still consuls and proconsuls and aediles and tribunes. Everything was basically the same, except that in the end, the buck stopped somewhere in the imperial palace. And who wants that responsibility anyway?

It would be years into the Tiberian regime before the Romans really got a taste of the dark side of absolute power, but by then it was way too late. For his part, Tiberius tried to follow in the savvy footsteps of Augustus and make sure at first not to rub his power in anyone's face. He was deferential to the senate almost to a fault, and when they tried to immediately heap upon him all the honors they had thrust upon Augustus, Tiberius demurred. Some he would accept, but some, like the civic crown or the title father of the country, he refused. He was interested in power, yes, but was perfectly willing to give the senate a greater share in the governance of the country, if only to take some of the responsibility off of his plate. When they kept refusing to show some initiative, and instead kept waiting for him to tell them what to do, Tiberius complained that the senate was full of men fit to be slaves. The once great body had descended into an impotent social club for rich old men. If Cato hadn't been cremated, he would be spinning in his grave.

But the legions, the legions were a different story, and they were not so quick to roll over for their new master. The first mutiny of 14 AD took place in Pannonia, where a few legions rose up against their officers and took control of the camps. The men then began looting the countryside for anything of value while they waited for some kind of reaction from Rome. When word came of the mutiny, Tiberius acted quickly and ordered his son Drusus to go take control of the situation. He didn't want to go himself, as it would set a bad precedent that all it took to get the new emperor to come around was a little insubordination. Tiberius wanted the men to understand that it was beneath his dignity to personally address such trivial issues like insubordinate foot soldiers. But he also wanted to signal that he took the mutiny seriously and that he was not simply going to blow off the demands from his army, which was, after all, critical to his remaining in power. So he split the difference and sent Drusus.

Accompanying the emperor's son were two cohorts of the Praetorian Guard, led by a man who was to act as Drusus' advisor on the trip, and who will play a major role in our next episode, Lucius Sejanus. When Drusus arrived, the men were in a sorry state of disrepair, and while they accepted Drusus into camp, they were not thrilled to see him rather than his father. Drusus promised to do his best to meet the soldiers' demands, mostly centered around reducing the service time from 20 years down to 16, but that he would also have to consult with Tiberius before any final decisions could be made. The leaders of the mutiny accused Drusus of playing the same good cop, bad cop routine with them that Tiberius and Augustus used to play, with Tiberius now playing the bad rather than the good cop. Drusus swore this wasn't the case, but the incensed troops drove him from the dais anyway.

That night, though, Drusus sent allies into the camps to speak one-on-one with the soldiers. What did they think the final outcome of all this was going to be? That somehow the leaders of the mutiny were going to be made generals and put in line for the throne? That attacking the son of the emperor was going to make Tiberius more likely to give in to their demands? By morning, Tiberius had sowed enough doubt with the men that they were ready to let go their treason. He promised the soldiers unconditional pardons and the right to present their case to Tiberius if they returned control of the camps to their officers and produced the leaders of the mutiny for trial. The soldiers, having thought through the likely penalty for keeping up the revolt, immediately complied.

The first test of Tiberius' reign ended in success for the new emperor, thanks to the savvy diplomacy of his son. But immediately after the situation in Pannonia was settled, a similar mutiny broke out on the banks of the lower Rhine. A few of the legions stationed there revolted against their officers and drove them out of the camp, following the lead of their brothers down in Pannonia. This time, it was Germanicus who hastened to the crisis. Germanicus was the biological grand-nephew of Augustus and the biological nephew of Tiberius, and by legal adoption, was now the grandson of the old emperor and son of the new one. He had just arrived in Gaul to take on the command assigned to him by the senate after the passing of Augustus, when news of the revolt came and he quickly made his way to the mutinous camps.

Germanicus took after his father, Tiberius' brother Jerusalem. He was popular, easy-going, a natural leader, and an accomplished soldier, an all-around Roman dreamboat. If you ladies out there want to get a look at the young hunk, there is a picture of a sculpture of Germanicus posted along with this week's episode, taken by the History of Rome's Belgian correspondent Justin, who recently took a visit to the British Museum and was kind enough to send along an album's worth of pictures, which I'm sure you'll see pop up now and again as we move forward. I also want to mention that back on the Teutoburg Forest episode, there are now some pictures posted of a reenactment of the battle, taken a few years ago by Chief Reenactment Correspondent Carolyn, who was good enough to send them along. Awesome stuff, so go check it out.

Being as popular as he was with the men, at first the troops tried to convince Germanicus to join them, that if he wanted to seize the throne from Tiberius, they would be more than happy to help him. But Germanicus was indignant at the very suggestion, and promised to kill himself before joining in their treason. Chastened, the men simply ticked off their grievances, which again centered around earlier retirement and more pay for the soldiers who still owed service time. Germanicus, unlike Drusus, went ahead and granted their request unilaterally, rather than waiting for final word from Tiberius. He left the camps pacified, and thought that was the end of it.

But the troops soon learned that a delegation from the Senate was on the way. Fearing that the delegation would cancel the promises of Germanicus, the troops again mutinied, and when the senatorial party arrived, the delegates were attacked. Germanicus hurried back to the scene, and shamed the men for shooting first and asking questions later. How did they know what the plans of the delegation were? The men from Rome hadn't even been given a chance to speak. Having talked them down from the ledge once again, Germanicus decided it was best to immediately follow through on the promise of dismissal for those who had served more than 16 years. He paid them what discharge bonuses he could, out of his own pocket, and sent them to Raetia for settlement. Eventually discharged soldiers settled in the provinces where they served, but Germanicus wanted to make sure that these particular disgruntled troops were put out of everyone's sight and out of everyone's mind. He also went through the ranks of the men one by one with their officers, and expelled identified troublemakers from the army.

With the men once again pacified, Germanicus began to make plans for a long term solution to the unrest. The problem, he decided, was inactivity. When soldiers aren't fighting, the officers have to come up with some way to keep them occupied, and that usually amounted to day after day of dull manual labor. Bored and disgruntled soldiers become mutinous soldiers very quickly. Germanicus resolved to give the legions on the Rhine something to do.

Back in Rome, Tiberius did not like the reports he was getting from the region. The men were trying to declare Germanicus Imperator, and he was doling out concessions that had not been approved by Rome. Even with the blatantly obvious demonstration of Germanicus' loyalty to Tiberius a matter of public record, Tiberius went to bed at night with visions of a Germanicus-led coup dancing in his head. I guess it was simply the fact that so many would be willing to follow the young general if he decided to do something that kept him up at night. But despite his misgivings, Tiberius decided to allow Germanicus to remain on the Rhine. Who knows, maybe he would fall off his horse and die like his father Drusus before him. That would be nice. He wouldn't though. Instead, Germanicus would just raise his profile even more, much to Tiberius' chagrin.

In 15 AD, a year which saw Tiberius' son Drusus taking over the consulship and, fatefully, Lucius Sejanus taking over as praetorian prefect, Germanicus decided to do something about the inactivity of the legions on the Rhine. Their boredom had led to mutiny, so Germanicus decided to stimulate them. When the spring came, he ordered his men across the river on a raiding expedition. One of the things that had triggered the previous year's mutiny was the perception that they would be denied bonuses promised to them by Augustus now that the old princeps was dead. So Germanicus told them that any plunder taken during that season's campaign would be their bonuses. There wasn't much in the way of long-term strategic aims when it came to Germanicus' expeditions across the Rhine. The point was for the Romans to continue revenging themselves on the Germans for the massacre in the Teutoburg forest, while seizing as much treasure and as many slaves as they could. Not exactly the most high-minded of aims, but Germanicus would still emerge from the invasion more famous and more loved in Rome than ever.

One of the keys to his lasting fame was the fact that the young general seemed to put the horror of the Teutoburg behind Rome forever, just as Scipio had once put Cannae behind them by finally defeating Hannibal. In fact, when it came to Germanicus, comparisons to Scipio, and even Alexander the Great, came early and often. Germanicus did not conclusively defeat the Germans, but he did demonstrate that the disaster in the Teutoburg forest was an aberration. Whenever you get beaten like that, you can't help but wonder if it's the beginning of the end, if all the good times are in the past, and that now maybe you can't keep up anymore. The Romans had to wonder if they were still the invincible force they told themselves they were, or whether those days were now in the rear-view mirror. They had, after all, spent the last few years only fighting each other, not really thinking about what was going on in the greater world. But Germanicus's incursions into Germany, while not universally successful, nonetheless showed that Rome could still hold its own on the battlefield against foreign enemies.

And as much as that one battle came to define the Roman abandonment of Germania, more precisely, it was Tiberius deciding to shutter Germanicus's campaigns that really sealed the deal. And even that was much more about personal rivalry than it was about policy. At the time, Germania was politically divided into coastal tribes who were friendly to Rome, the powerful tribes in Bohemia who remained neutral, and the fiercely anti-Roman confederation forged by Arminius in the central part of the country. Germanicus crossed into Germania in the spring of 15, with upwards of 100,000 men, and made straight for Arminius. Revenge was on everyone's mind.

Germanicus was able to easily cut through the defense forces sent to stop him, and at one point even captured Arminius's wife. But the chief himself, and the bulk of the German army, remained elusive. Germanicus followed this with a key victory on the Ems River, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bend Arminius and the Germans down. When battles started to go against them, they simply disappeared into the forest, living to fight another day. By avoiding defeat, Arminius was able to rally more tribes to drive off the invaders, and the campaign began to look more evenly matched, with the Germans now offering much stiffer resistance.

Before the year was out, though, Germanicus was able to accomplish at least one of the goals he had set for himself. Following the lead of survivors from the battle, Germanicus's army made their way to the site of the Teutoburg Massacre. What they found was the chilling leftover of a slaughter. Bones and debris still lay strewn and unburied, heads had been chopped off and nailed to trees. The evidence of the religious sacrifices the Germans had turned captured officers into also remained, and the survivors who were present attested to the roasting alive of prisoners. Germanicus ordered the remains buried, and a funeral mound built to honor the dead. As his solemn duty performed, Germanicus pointed his army once again toward Arminius and attacked.

But the German leader was able to lure his Roman foes into a trap. He led them into a swampy area and left the Romans with nothing but a thin strip of dry land to work with. But despite the terrible terrain, the legions were able to fortify a defensive position. Against his better judgment, Arminius decided to follow the advice of his more aggressive uncle and ordered an assault on the Roman position. Though the Romans would always struggle against the elements in Germania, when they were behind a wall and dealing with a frontal assault, well, they had been there before. So instead of annihilating a second Roman army, and probably making himself as famous as Hannibal to boot, Arminius was forced to retreat after suffering massive casualties. Germanicus led his men out of the swamp and back across the Rhine for the winter.

The next year saw Germanicus only more determined than ever to crush Arminius. The Romans tracked the German leader to the Vese River. An initial battle erupted when the Romans attempted to cross. Arminius swooped in and tried to prevent the crossing, but his men were unable to hold the Roman tied back, though heavy casualties did force Germanicus to withdraw further up the river once he was on the far side. The Germans pursued and a second battle broke out. In this encounter, Arminius was injured, but he managed to escape uncaptured. The final confrontation took place further downstream, past the site of the original crossing. Just as had occurred at the end of the last year, the Romans were able to inflict serious damage on the German army, but when things got bad enough, Arminius simply ordered his men to melt back into the forest. Germanicus had to leave it there for the year, the weather was turning, and he had to get his men back to the safety of Gaul.

The return trip, though, proved to be almost as dangerous as facing the Germans. Germanicus decided that the quickest route would be to ferry his men downriver and sail around Gaul by way of the North Sea, preferring it to slogging through the marshland back to Gaul. But a storm kicked up as the fleet hit the open water and drove them against the rocks. But rather than this debacle tarnishing his image, the incident actually served to boost Germanicus' popularity even more, as stories of the young general risking his life to drag survivors of the shipwrecks ashore filtered down to Rome.

Tiberius, settling into his first years as emperor, watched all of this with a combination of anger and fear. He had had every intention of keeping Rome permanently on the west bank of the Rhine, and here was Germanicus flagrantly invading Germania season after season. But not only did the young man's incursions rub Tiberius the wrong way policy-wise, it also rubbed him the wrong way personally. Never socially at ease or a particularly popular man, Tiberius chafed as the people cheered for Germanicus. It wouldn't do to simply cancel the invasions because, after all, Germanicus' victories ultimately reflected well on the imperial regime, but if this went on much longer, would the people call for the dour Tiberius to be replaced by the bright and chipper Germanicus? The troops along the Rhine had already tried it once after all. Slightly paranoid and carrying a mighty chip on his shoulder, Tiberius didn't like where any of this was headed. So he decided to use the occasion of Germanicus' success on the far side of the Rhine to promote his adopted son, hopefully promote him high enough that he could be kept out of trouble, be watched, and perhaps disposed of. So Germanicus was recalled to Rome.

When he entered the city, Tiberius awarded him the first triumph the city had seen in almost forty years. Augustus had basically done away with the practice. Displayed along with his other spoils were two prizes that caused the people to shower even more love on Germanicus. Two of the three legionary standards lost by Varus had been founded and retaken during the previous year's campaigns. But once his day in the sun came to an end, Germanicus was dismayed to learn that he would not be headed back to the Rhine. Instead, Tiberius told him, he would be given at-large pro-consular authority over the eastern provinces. After all, Germanicus was destined to succeed him. It wouldn't do to have him risking his life fighting savages. No, it was time to grow more acquainted with the routine of empire. It wasn't as glamorous, but it was more important. Reluctantly, Germanicus accepted the promotion and packed his wife Agrippina and their children, including young Gaius, the future infamous Emperor Caligula, and their daughter Agrippina the younger, who would one day be the wife of Claudius and the mother of Nero.

But Tiberius had no intention of letting Germanicus have his way with things in the east. The point of the promotion was to marginalize Germanicus, not, you know, actually promote him. So Tiberius appointed a close confidant named Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to the governorship of Syria. While all we have to go on is supposition and accusations, the word on the street is that Piso, at a minimum, was appointed specifically to stymie any initiatives embarked upon by Germanicus, and at a maximum, Piso was said to have engineered, at Tiberius's order, the young heir apparent's death.

From 17 to 19 AD, Germanicus lived and worked in the east, settling local disputes, doling out justice, and doing some good old-fashioned sightseeing, including taking in the ruins of Troy. Along the way, he clashed time and again with Piso, who seemed determined to undermine him at every turn, almost as if that was the whole reason he had been appointed governor. Germanicus would order Piso to send troops to Armenia, and Piso would refuse. He would make staff appointments in the army, and find them cancelled by Piso. After his fateful trip to Egypt, which I'll get to in a second, Germanicus returned to Antioch and discovered that Piso had been busy undoing every decision he had ever made about provincial administration. There was no love lost between the two, and any time they were in the same room, the air was chilly and the threats were veiled.

Until the trip to Egypt, though, there was no indication that Piso or Tiberius had anything more sinister in mind than making Germanicus's life miserable. But when word got back to Tiberius that Germanicus was in Egypt, the emperor's attitude seems to have taken a murderous turn. The thing about Egypt was that it was probably the most important province in the whole empire. Its wealth bankrolled the imperial regime, and its ample grain supplies fed the people of Rome. From the moment he seized the country from Antony and Cleopatra, Augustus knew that Egypt was the key to the whole game. As long as the province was administered personally by the emperor, no ambitious rival could touch the regime. So Augustus had declared Egypt to be the personal property of the emperor. Any Roman of rank who wished to enter the territory had to receive the express written consent of the emperor before doing so. But Germanicus had ignored this protocol and simply headed on down. Offended and threatened by his nephew's action, Tiberius likely got word to Piso that enough was enough.

In 19 AD, shortly after returning to Antioch, Germanicus fell ill. Because of the previous run-ins with Piso, poison was immediately suspected. There was certainly no doubt in the mind of Germanicus and Agrippina that he was being poisoned anyway. Reports also come down to us of strange objects being discovered in the family's house. Human remains, tablets with Germanicus' name crossed out, piles of ash. All of it led the family to believe that some sort of black magic was at play as well. Despite his lifetime record of good health, Germanicus just kept getting worse. Finally, after telling Agrippina for her sake and the children's not to risk pursuing justice and to beware of Tiberius, Germanicus died. He was only 34 years old.

His body was cremated in Antioch and Agrippina bore his ashes back to Rome, where the entire country went into mourning. Never heeding her dead husband's advice, Agrippina made no secret that she thought Piso was behind her husband's death, or that she thought Tiberius was behind Piso. Whether or not Tiberius really ordered Piso to assassinate Germanicus, the charges were now out there in the open and the Emperor had to do something about it. Tiberius, of course, denied all involvement, and when Agrippina and Germanicus' old friends formally requested that charges be brought against Piso, the Emperor had no choice but to grant the request. If he wasn't involved, he had no reason to stand in the way of justice, even if he himself argued that the charges against Piso were preposterous.

Returning to Rome, the ex-governor of Syria faced the Senate, defiant and refusing to accept blame for what he termed nothing more than a sad twist of fate. The Senate, though, was ill-disposed toward Piso and heard more than enough testimony to convince them that something fishy had gone on. When Tiberius refused to use his imperial prerogative to get Piso off the hook, the accused committed suicide. Either that or he was killed by Tiberius because the Emperor was afraid that a cornered Piso might just spill his guts. Whatever Tiberius' actual role in the death of Germanicus, Agrippina's version of events was widely believed thereafter. The Emperor had murdered his adopted son because he was jealous of the young man and was afraid of his growing power. This would be the beginning of a chasm that would open up between the people of Rome and their Emperor. They came to hate him, and in time, he came to hate them too.

For a while, Tiberius remained fully engaged in imperial administration and was a mostly effective ruler, despite his poor standing with the people. Next week, though, Tiberius will go off the deep end and wind up abandoning Rome completely, literally leaving Rome forever, never to return. Hated by the people, smothered by his mother, and grieving the sudden death of his son Jerusalem, Tiberius will withdraw from public life and leave the day-to-day operation of Rome to his trusty lieutenant Sejanus. An ironic choice, as it was Sejanus who had murdered Jerusalem in the first place.