Gaius, whose vision was chiefly fixed on the conquest of that unconquerable land. The settlement of the Armenian question was, in the first instance, easily and peacefully accomplished. Gaius and Phraataces, the son of Phraates, met on an island in the middle of the Euphrates, and the Parthian agreed to resign his claim to Armenia. But it was still necessary to enforce submission to this decision in Armenia itself: and accordingly Gaius proceeded thither to install Ariobarzanes, son of Artavasdes. Before the walls of the fortress of Artagira he was wounded by treachery, and some months later he died of the effects of the hurt at Limyra in Lycia (4 A.D.). During the rest of the reign of Augustus, no serious measures were adopted in regard to Armenia, and that state was rent by the contentions between the Parthian and the Roman parties.
The unfortunate death of the young Caesar put an end to the design of conquering Arabia. That enterprise had been seriously entertained by the Roman government, and actually attempted at an earlier date. The possession of southern Arabia would have been an important advantage, not like that of Armenia or Moesia for military purposes, but from a purely mercantile point of view. The chief route of trade from India to Europe was by the Red Sea—Adane (Aden) was then, as now, an important port—and the Arabians, with their born genius for commerce, had it in their hands. The Indian wares were disembarked either at Leuce Come, on the west coast of Arabia, and thence transported overland to Petra and on to some Syrian port, or at Myos Hormos, on the opposite Egyptian coast, whence they were carried by camels to Coptos (near Thebes) and shipped for Alexandria. Once in possession of Egypt, the Roman government could not fail to see that it would be highly profitable to command the Red Sea route entirely, and get the trade into the hands of their own subjects. Not long after the establishment of his power, Augustus took up the question, and here for once, he was aggressive. He planned an expedition, of which the object was to reduce under Roman sway the land of Yemen, the south-western portion of the Arabian peninsula. That land was known to the Romans as Arabia Felix, and its people—the Himyarites—as the Sabaei. It was a rich country, which in itself invited conquest, though, in consequence of the remote situation, the luxurious inhabitant had never been subdued, as Horace tells us, by a foreign master. They supplied the Empire with spices and perfumes, cassia, aloes, myrrh, frankincense, while in return they received the precious metals, which they kept in their land. The expedition started towards the end of 25 B.C., and was entrusted to the care of Aelius Gallus, an officer holding a high post in Egypt. Ten thousand men, half the number of troops in Egypt, were placed under his command, in addition to auxiliaries supplied by the kings of Nabatea and Judea. The Nabateans had constant intercourse with Arabia Felix, and Syllabus, a minister of the Nabatean king Obodas, undertook to play the part of guide. The whole expedition was miserably mismanaged; it is hard to say how far Gallus was to blame and how far his guide may have acted in bad faith. His friend the geographer Strabo, from whom we learn the details of the enterprise, shifts the blame on Syllabus; and it is quite conceivable, that the Nabateans may have secretly wished the expedition to fail, thinking that its success might divert the traffic that had hitherto passed through their country.
The army embarked at Arsinoe (on the Isthmus of Suez) in a fleet of war-vessels. Such vessels were quite needless, as there was no question of hostilities by sea. They disembarked at Leuce Come, which was perhaps at this time subject to Rome, and passed the winter there. In spring they marched southwards by circuitous and laborious routes, and at length reached the capital of the Sabaeans. But the army, though the natives gave little trouble, had suffered severely from disease and hunger, and when at last they came to the residence of the Sabaean kings, Mariba, on its woody hill, both the general and the men were too exhausted and despondent to set to the task of besieging it. Having spent six days there, Gallus abandoned the undertaking, and the expedition returned home, but with more speed than it had gone thither. Something had been accomplished in the way of exploring the country, but the Sabaei were still, as before, unconquered. Augustus, however, did not choose to consider the expedition a failure. He speaks of it complacently among his achievements, and he promoted Aelius Gallus to the prefecture of Egypt.
While half of the Egyptian army was absent on the Arabian enterprise, the other half was called upon to defend the southern frontier against the aggressions of a neighboring power. Upper Egypt extended as far as Elephantine on the Nile, and beyond that limit lay the land of the Ethiopians, at this time ruled by the one-eyed queen Candace. She had invaded and plundered the extreme parts of Upper Egypt—Syene and Elephantine; and after fruitless demands for satisfaction, C. Petronius the prefect was obliged to take the field (24 B.C.), at the head of 10,000 footmen and 800 horse. He routed the enemy, took the town of Pselchis on the Nile, and advanced as far as Napata, where was the queen’s palace, in the neighborhood of the Ethiopian capital Meroe. He razed Napata to the ground. He did not attempt to occupy all this country, but made a strong place, named Premnis(or Premis), his advanced post. In the following year Premnis was attacked by the Ethiopians, and Petronius had to return again to relieve it. He inflicted another defeat on the foe (22 B.C.), and Candace was compelled to sue for peace. Her ambassadors were sent to Augustus, who was then at Samos, and peace was granted, the prefect being directed to evacuate the territory which he had occupied. Augustus drew the line of frontier at Syene.
Chapter IX.
The Winning and Losing of Germany — Death of Augustus
SECT. I. — THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY
The subject of the present chapter is the story of the Roman Germany that might have been. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul pointed beyond the limits of that country to further conquests; it pointed beyond the sea, to the island of the north, and eastward beyond the Rhine, to the forests of central Europe.
Caesar had shown the way to the conquest of Britain, he had likewise crossed the Rhine. As far as Britain was concerned, Augustus did not follow out the suggestions of his “father”; that enterprise was reserved for one of his successors. But in regard to Germany he was persuaded to act otherwise. The advance of the Roman frontier from the Rhine to the Albis (Elbe), and the subjugation of the intervening peoples, must have seemed from a military point of view good policy. The line of frontier to be defended would thus be lessened. The defence of the Upper Danube, from Vindonissa on the Rhine to Lauriacum would not be needed, and the Albis would take the place of the Rhine. This project of extending the Empire to the Albis, into which perhaps the cautious Emperor was persuaded by the ardor of his favorite stepson Drusus, was well begun and seemingly certain of success, when it was cut short by an untoward accident, if there was not some deeper cause in the hidden counsels of the Roman government. But the winning and losing of Germany is a most interesting episode, giving us our earliest glimpse of the rivers and forests of central Europe.
Caesar in his Commentaries has given a brief sketch of the political and social life of the Germans in general, and of the Suevians in particular. This sketch, though somewhat vague and doubtless derived chiefly from the information of Gauls, is valuable as the earliest picture of the life of our forefathers, and one written by a great statesman. He describes them as a hardy, laborious and temperate people, dividing their life between hunting and warlike exercises. They practice agriculture but little, and subsist chiefly on flesh, milk, and cheese. No one possesses a permanent lot of land; but the chiefs assign a certain portion of land every year, and for only one year’s occupancy, to the several communities which form a civitas. At the end of each year the allotments are given up, and each community moves elsewhere. For this custom several reasons were given, of which the most important were that the people might not by permanent settlement become agricultural and give up warfare; that the more powerful might not drive the weaker from their possessions; and that the mass of the people might be contented. The territory of each tribe is isolated from those of its neighbors by a surrounding strip of devastated unpeopled land. This is a safeguard against sudden attack. In time of war special commanders are chosen; but in time of peace, there is no central or supreme magistracy in the state, but the chiefs of the various districts (pagi) or tribal subdivisions, administer justice. The Suovi had a hundred pagi, of which each furnished a thousand man to the military host; the rest stayed at home and provided food for the warriors.