Nature of the Roman task and its issue.
When we look back on this war, one of the most singular and most dreadful in all ages, we cannot but own that hardly ever has an army had a task set before it equally severe with that of the two Roman armies on the Rhine in the years 69 and 70. In the course of a few months soldiers successively of Nero, of the senate, of Galba, of Vitellius, and of Vespasian; the only support to the dominion of Italy over the two mighty nations of the Gauls and the Germans, while the soldiers of the auxiliaries were taken almost entirely, and those of the legions in great part, from those very nations; deprived of their best men, mostly without pay, often starving, and beyond all measure wretchedly led, they were certainly expected to perform feats physically and morally super–human. They ill sustained the severe trial. This was less a war between two divisions of the army, like the other civil wars of this terrible time, than a war of soldiers, and above all of officers, of the second class against those of the first, combined with a dangerous insurrection and invasion of the Germans, and an incidental and insignificant revolt of some Celtic districts. In Roman military history Cannae and Carrhae and the Teutoburg Forest are glorious pages compared with the double disgrace of Novaesium; only a few individual men, not a single troop, preserved a pure escutcheon amidst the general dishonour. The frightful disorganisation of the political and, above all, of the military system, which meets us on the fall of the Julio–Claudian dynasty, appears—more clearly even than in the leaderless battle of Betriacum—in those events on the Rhine, to which the history of Rome never before and never after exhibits a parallel.
Consequences of the Batavian war.
The very extent and general diffusion of these misdeeds rendered a corresponding chastisement impossible. It deserves to be acknowledged that the new ruler, who happily had remained in person aloof from all these occurrences, in a genuine statesmanly fashion allowed the past to be past, and exerted himself only to prevent the repetition of similar scenes. That the prominent culprits, whether from the ranks of the troops or from the insurgents, were brought to account for their crimes, was a matter of course; we may measure the punishment by the fact that when five years afterwards one of the Gallic insurgent leaders was discovered in a lurking–place, in which his wife had up to that time kept him concealed, Vespasian gave him as well as her over to the executioner. But the renegade legions were allowed to share in the fighting against the Germans, and to atone for their guilt to some extent in the hot conflicts at Treves and at Vetera. It is true, nevertheless, that the four legions of the lower Rhenish army were all dismissed, as was one of the two upper Rhenish legions that took part—one would gladly believe that the 22d was spared in honourable remembrance of its brave legate. Probably a considerable number of the Batavian cohorts met with the same fate, and not less, apparently, the cavalry regiment of the Treveri, and perhaps several other specially prominent troops. Still less than against the rebellious soldiers could proceedings be taken with the full severity of the law against the insurgent Celtic and German cantons; that the Roman legions demanded the razing of the Treverian colony of Augustus—this time for the sake not of booty but of vengeance—is at least as intelligible as the destruction, desired by the Germans, of the town of the Ubii; but as Civilis protected the one so Vespasian protected the other. Even the Germans on the left of the Rhine had, on the whole, their previous position left to them. But probably—we are here without certain tradition—there was introduced in the levy and the employment of the auxilia an essential change, which diminished the danger involved in the auxiliary system. The Batavi retained freedom from taxation and a still privileged position as regards service; a part of them, not altogether inconsiderable, had withal championed in arms the cause of the Romans. But the Batavian troops were considerably diminished, and, while hitherto—as it would appear of right—officers had been placed over them from their own nobility, and the same had been at least frequently done as respects the other Germanic and Celtic troops, the officers of the alae and cohortes were afterwards taken predominantly from the class from which Vespasian himself was descended—from the good urban middle class of Italy and of the provincial towns organised after the Italian fashion. Officers of the position of the Cheruscan Arminius, of the Batavian Civilis, of the Treverian Classicus do not henceforth recur. As little is the previous close association of troops levied from the same canton met with subsequently; on the contrary, the men serve, without distinction as to their descent, in the most various divisions; this was probably a lesson which the Roman military administration gathered from this war. It was another change, probably suggested by this war, that while hitherto the majority of the auxiliaries employed in Germany were taken from the Germanic and neighbouring cantons, thenceforth the Germanic auxiliary troops found preponderantly employment outside of their native country, just like the Dalmatian and Pannonian troops in consequence of the war with Bato. Vespasian was a soldier of sagacity and experience; it is probably in good part a merit of his if we meet with no later example of revolt of the auxilia against their legions.
Later attitude of the Roman Germans on the lower Rhine.
That the insurrection, which we have just narrated, of the Germans on the left of the Rhine—although it, in consequence of the accidental completeness of the accounts preserved respecting it, alone gives us a clear insight into the political and military relations on the lower Rhine and in Gaul generally, and therefore deserved to be narrated in more detail—was yet called forth more by outward and accidental causes than by the inner necessity of things, is proved by the apparently complete quiet which now ensued there, and by the—so far as we can see—uninterrupted status quo in this very region. The Roman Germans were merged in the empire no less completely than the Roman Gauls; of attempts at insurrection on the part of the former there is no further mention. At the close of the third century, the Franks invading Gaul by way of the lower Rhine included in their seizure the Batavian territory; yet the Batavians maintained themselves in their old though diminished settlements, as did likewise the Frisians, even during the confusions of the great migration of peoples, and, so far as we know, preserved allegiance even to the decaying empire.
The free Germans on the lower Rhine.
When we turn from the Romanised to the free Germans to the east of the Rhine, we find offensive action on their part not less brought to an end with their participation in that Batavian insurrection, than the attempts of the Romans to bring about an alteration of the frontier on a grand scale in those regions came to a close with the expeditions of Germanicus.
Bructeri.
Of the free Germans, those dwelling next to the Roman territory were the Bructeri on both banks of the middle Ems, and in the region of the sources of the Ems and Lippe; for which reason they took part before all the other Germans in the Batavian insurrection. To their canton belonged the maiden Veleda, who sent forth her countrymen to the war against Rome and promised them the victory, whose utterance decided the fate of the town of the Ubii, and to whose high tower the captive senators and the captured admiral’s ship of the Rhenish fleet were sent. The overthrow of the Batavi affected them also; and perhaps, in addition, a special counterblow of the Romans since that virgin was subsequently led as a captive to Rome. This disaster, as well as feuds with the neighbouring tribes, broke their power; under Nero a king whom they did not wish was obtruded on them by force of arms on the part of their neighbours with the passive assistance of the Roman legate.
Cherusci.
The Cherusci, in the region of the upper Weser, in the time of Augustus and Tiberius the leading canton in central Germany, is seldom mentioned after the death of Arminius, but always as sustaining good relations to the Romans. When the civil war, which must have continued to rage among them even after the fall of Arminius, had swept away the whole family of their princes, they requested from the Roman government the last of that house, Italicus, a brother’s son of Arminius living in Italy, to be their ruler; it is true that the return home of one who was brave but answered more to his name than to his lineage, kindled the feud afresh, and, when he was driven off by his own people, the Langobardi placed him once more on the tottering throne. One of his successors, king Chariomerus, so earnestly took the side of the Romans in Domitian’s war with the Chatti, that he after its close, when driven away by the Chatti, fled to the