The Crisis of Rome Read online

  Finding no certainty in our narrative sources, we have to turn to wider fields, such as archaeology, linguistics and ethnography, which have analysed this problem for several centuries. Recently, Faux has produced some excellent compilations of the evidence to date, which all points to the Cimbri being a Celtic tribe, based on their similarities to known Celtic races.171

  Their history before their encounter with the Romans is another matter and upon that there is no consensus. Some theories, based on accounts found in both Plutarch and Strabo, argue that they were a Gallo-Scythian race and connect them to the Cimmerians as found in Homer and Herodotus,172 others that they were the survivors of the Gallic attack on Greece in 280–279 who fled north.173 A more widely-argued theory is that they were part of the main Celtic movement of peoples and that this branch occupied the Jutland Peninsula (modern Denmark) somewhere in the region of the fifth or fourth century BC. Ultimately, it is an argument that will never be solved.

  The Cimbric Migration (c.120–113)

  As well as the various theories surrounding their origin, we also have to analyse why they moved south en masse and what their aims were. Given the size of the varying estimates of their numbers, 200,000 to 300,000, this was clearly a great migration.174 The reason most often stated in the sources is one of tribal migration caused by disastrous natural causes, namely rising sea levels. Although Strabo dismisses this theory, arguing that sea levels could not rise unpredictably (based on his limited experience of the Mediterranean), there is some geological evidence to support this. One key problem to this theory, however, is the fact that in Strabo’s day, the Cimbri were still to be found living in that region.175 If the Cimbri were driven from their traditional homes by a natural catastrophe, then what were they still doing there in Augustus’ time?

  One factor that might help us understand this problem comes from the fact that we regularly talk of the Cimbri as though they were a single homogenous entity. From the descriptions of the battles that take place later in this period (101 BC, see Chapter 10), the sources name a number of different Cimbric chieftains or kings. The most logical explanation for this is that the Cimbri were not one tribe of several hundred thousand, but were a collection of differing tribes of the Cimbric peoples. Thus it seems that a number of the Cimbric tribes migrated from their homeland, either due to rising tide levels or some unknown reason, such as inter-tribal warfare, but a number of the tribes stayed in the region. It is also possible that population growth and overcrowding could have sparked off a mass migration, especially given an earlier example of this, found in Livy from the sixth century.176

  It is also possible that the tribes that left acted as pathfinders for the whole race and would have summoned their brethren who remained behind once they had secured a new homeland. As they were ultimately defeated, this summons never came and so there were a number of tribes that remained and managed to cope in their old land as best as possible. If this whole migration was caused by rising sea levels or other pressure on natural resources, then the removal of such a large number would have eased the problems and made life more bearable for the remaining tribes.

  We do not know when the Cimbric tribes began their migration, but it would have taken them a number of years to move southwards. Strabo preserves details of the route they took, southwards down towards and across the Danube.177 It has been postulated that the route they chose, which looks unusual to modern eyes, was based on the amber trading routes of tribal Europe.178 Strabo goes on to say that the Cimbric tribes encountered the Boiii, then the Scordisci, the Teuristae and finally the Taurisci, thus southwards to the Danube and then westwards towards the Alps. Unfortunately, for them, they encountered a hostile reception wherever they went. This is not surprising given that the appearance of several hundred thousand rival tribesmen and women would have gravely alarmed any inhabitants, fearful both of hostile intentions and having to share their resources with such a host. Ultimately, such defeats drove them towards the Alps and they entered the region of Noricum, home to the Taurisci.

  As detailed above, the Taurisci were allied to Rome and in this case proved to be highly effective as an early warning system, as they were able to alert Rome to the advance of the Cimbri and request assistance. Not only would the Senate have been honour bound to help one of their allies in the region, but the mere mention of a migrating barbarian horde approaching Rome’s sphere of influence would soon have conjured up parallels to the infamous Gallic invasion of Italy in the 390s BC and the Gallic sack of Rome.

  It is therefore no surprise that the Senate instructed one of the consuls for 113, C. Papirius Carbo, to take an army to the region to investigate this new arrival, defend their allies and deal with any threat to Rome. Both the Senate and Carbo’s initial fears can be seen by Carbo’s taking up a defensive position in the Alps, defending Italy from invasion.179 This was a clear example of the Roman mentality and could hardly be seen as investigating the threat or defending Rome’s allies. Upon the arrival of the Cimbri, Carbo then moved his army into Noricum to investigate the situation. What he found apparently did not tally with his concept of a ‘barbarian horde’. We are told that, upon hearing of his approach, the Cimbri sent ambassadors to him to apologize for transgressing the territory of the Taurisci, whom they did not know were allies of Rome, and promising to leave their territory and continue their wanderings.180 This description ties in with the information we have about the Cimbri in this period, namely that they were a migrating tribe looking for a new homeland, avoiding fighting wherever necessary. However, what happened next was to have a profound effect on the nature of their migration.

  We will never know whether Papirius Carbo believed the Cimbric ambassadors or not; perhaps he believed it to be a ruse to lure him into lowering his (and Rome’s) guard. It is possible that these actions did not fit in with the Roman concept of a ‘barbarian’, especially in a time of renewed Scordiscian invasions in Macedon. This cultural misunderstanding would have been increased by the Roman paranoia about avoiding another Gallic sack, added to what must have been a personal desire for glory. Having achieved the consulship, the pinnacle of his political career, Carbo was faced with having to return to Rome and report that the ‘barbarians’ tamely agreed to turn back and wander elsewhere. It was far more attractive to him to defeat them in battle and return home a hero, having saved Rome from a new ‘Gallic menace’.

  To this end he set about to deal with the Cimbri, despite their protestations of peace. Appian reports that he accepted the ambassadors’ offer to move on and even sent guides with them as an act of friendship.181 However, these guides had been instructed to lead the Cimbri in an unknown direction, but by the longest route possible. He then led his army by a shorter route and ambushed the Cimbri as they were resting; the result was the Battle of Noreia.

  The Battle of Noreia (113 BC)

  Infuriatingly, we have no details as to how the battle was fought or the size of opposing forces. What we do know is that Carbo turned this ambush into a Roman disaster. It is possible that in his haste to reach the Cimbri he overstretched his own forces, or chose a poor place to attack them, which allowed the greater Cimbric numbers to tell. What was planned as a Roman massacre of the resting Cimbri soon turned into a Cimbric massacre of the Romans, with Carbo’s whole army being destroyed. Again, we have no concrete numbers, but Appian reports that those who did survive only did so due to the onset of a large thunderstorm, which provided the Romans with cover to flee in small groups. Of the few who did survive Carbo was amongst them and returned to Rome in shame. His defeat became a byword for Roman military incompetence against the Cimbri, still being used by Plutarch, hundreds of years later.182

  It is difficult to see how Carbo could have lost this battle so comprehensively, having both the advantage of surprise and having chosen his place of attack. The only two factors which may help to explain this, assuming that his guides did not treacherously warn the Cimbri, are numbers and terrain. It is interesting to note tha
t prior to his attack, it is unlikely that Carbo ever saw the full scale of the Cimbric tribes, having only dealt with ambassadors that came to him. Therefore, he may well have been unaware of the sheer scale of the task he faced (later estimates place Cimbric numbers in the hundreds of thousands). The other factor is terrain. Appian speaks of the Romans fleeing into the woods, and we do not know if he attacked them in an open or wooded area. If he did so then he may have unwittingly foreshowed the later Roman disaster at Teutoburg Forest, which clearly illustrated the legion’s limitations in fighting barbarians in a wooded area. Furthermore, we do not know where he attacked the Cimbri. If he did blunder into the middle of the Cimbri then he would soon have found himself surrounded by their far greater numbers.

  Whatever the cause, the outcome was another large Roman defeat by a ‘barbarian’ enemy, following from that of the Scordisci. Whether the Cimbri originally had hostile intentions or not, it is clear that Carbo’s actions left Rome nursing a need to avenge the loss and would have certainly soured the Cimbri against Rome. In the short term the defeat left Italy open to Cimbric invasion, though, in keeping with their stated intent, the Cimbri continued their journey northwestwards towards (hopefully) non-hostile territory.183 Although the immediate danger for Rome had abated, a legacy of bad blood had been created that would come back to haunt Rome.

  Summary

  We can see that in the years leading up to the outbreak of the Jugurthine War, Rome’s focus was clearly on the north. In the space of just two years (114–113 BC) two Roman armies had been destroyed in battle with different barbarian foes: the Scordisci and the Cimbri. In the northeast, Macedon and Greece had been invaded and plundered by a large and persistent tribal enemy, whilst the defeat in the Alps had left Italy itself open to invasion. Once again it showed that despite their military superiority over the so-called more advanced civilizations of the Mediterranean, the Romans were still susceptible to defeat by northern tribes.

  Thus, despite the importance given to the Jugurthine War by both the writing and survival of Sallust’s pamphlet on the war, for contemporary Romans the priority was their northern borders, assailed as they were by different tribes. Furthermore, it highlighted the fact that the supposedly-superior Roman military machine was not able to stand up to a supposedly ‘undisciplined’ tribal foe.

  War on Two Fronts

  (111–105 BC)

  Chapter 4

  The Jugurthine War: The Early Campaigns (111–110 BC)

  With an examination of the background completed, we can now turn our attention to the Jugurthine War itself. Whilst Sallust’s short work provides a good narrative of the war, it does lack in-depth analysis. For this purpose we can break the war down into three phases, each under a different overall commander. This chapter will examine the initial two commanders, L. Calpurnius Bestia and Sp. Postumius Albinus, and the early phases of the war.

  Initial Roman Aims

  Though Rome had declared war on Jugurtha, as we have seen it was not one that the Senate had desired. As detailed in Chapter 2, the impetus for war had come from the equestrian order and the people, via the tribunes. This being the case, we must focus on the questions of what the Senate desired from this war and what instructions were given to the first commander of the war, L. Calpurnius Bestia.

  With regard to the Roman aims, it is important to understand the dilemma which faced both the Senate and the consul responsible for pursuing the war. On the one hand Roman domestic outrage had to be appeased; Jugurtha had flagrantly disobeyed the Senatorial commission’s orders to end the Numidian Civil War peacefully and had massacred Italian citizens at Cirta, causing outrage, feigned or real, amongst both the people and the equestrian class. This was being exploited for political capital by a number of tribunes determined to undermine the Senatorial oligarchy and re-opened divides that had been exposed by the Gracchan crises in the previous decades. Thus there was a clear need for Jugurtha to be, or be seen to be, severely punished for his actions.

  Yet, when considered from the wider perspectives, the Senate had reason to be cautious. Numidia represented no immediate threat to Roman interests in the region and Jugurtha was an apparently-staunch Roman ally. Certainly there would have been some Senators worried at the prospect of Numidia as the dominant power in North Africa, but given the close ties between the two powers, this would not have been a major concern. If anything, diverting military resources to a war in Africa was exactly the opposite of what current Roman foreign policy demanded. As detailed in Chapter 3, for the previous decade all of Rome’s military efforts had been focussed on securing her fragile northern borders from barbarian threats. This was not the time to commit troops overseas when Italy itself was potentially at risk (which given the Cimbric threat, must have been a real concern).

  Furthermore, given that Rome already occupied the fertile plains of North Africa, there was no impetus for turning this into a war of conquest. Added to this was the problem of who would rule Numidia, if Jugurtha were to be removed. Adherbal’s death in Cirta had removed the last of the triumvirate of Micipsa’s children who had been kings of Numidia, though there were a number of other descendants of Massinissa who could have been elevated to the throne, possibly of a freshly-divided Numidia. In fact, given the previous ruling of the Senatorial commission and the fact that if Jugurtha remained sole king then he would have profited by his actions, it is most likely that the re-division of Numidia would have been a desired Roman outcome.

  Therefore, for the Senate and its commander this war was to be a punishment campaign, to bring Jugurtha to submission and ensure that the Senate’s vision for Numidia be enforced, all to be accomplished in the shortest possible timescale and with the minimum of effort. The nature of Jugurtha’s submission is an interesting question, given both his crimes and his previous loyalty to Rome. It is unlikely that the Senate would have considered stripping him of his throne completely, merely humbling him and gaining his public submission.

  The Roman Commander - L. Calpurnius Bestia

  These were the complicated circumstances which faced the consuls of 111 B.C. The two men elected were P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica and L. Calpurnius Bestia. It is interesting that a Scipio managed to get elected for 111 BC, despite the overall decline in prominence of the family, given their close family ties to the Numidian royal family. If this link was in the mind of the electorate then the lot which decided the consular commands at random denied them their intention, as the command for Africa fell to Calpurnius Bestia. It is no surprise that the other consular command was Italy, covering any possible return of the Cimbri.

  Bestia himself was of the plebeian nobility and appears to have been the first of his family to achieve high office. He is the earliest recorded member of his family to achieve an office of the cursus honorum and the first to achieve the consulship.184 He had been a tribune, but we know nothing of his praetorship and thus have no knowledge of his military record to date or how competent an officer he was185. On the positive side, we are told that he choose an experienced group of noblemen as his legates for the campaign, which included M. Aemilius Scaurus, the former consul of 115 BC (see Chapter 2).

  Again, one of the hallmarks of Sallust’ narrative is a lack of military detail. We are not told the size of the army levied by Bestia to take to Africa. However, for the events of the following years we are told that the Roman army was 40,000 strong.186 Given that Bestia’ campaign was only intended to be a punitive expedition, and given concerns elsewhere, notably Italy, it may have been that the army of 111 BC was considerably smaller, but we simply have no firm evidence. We are also informed that the army was freshly levied in Italy, as was the norm.187

  Initial Jugurthine Aims

  It is clear that Jugurtha had not expected Rome to declare war on him for his attack on Cirta. Whether this was due to his financial largesse amongst the Senate or the more prosaic reasons surrounding Roman indifference towards events in Numidia and focus on the north we will never know. What is cle
ar is that even at this stage he hoped to avoid a military confrontation and to these ends he sent an unnamed son as an emissary to Rome to negotiate with the Senate. However, the Senate refused him entry into the city and ordered his party to leave Italy within ten days unless they could offer Jugurtha’s unconditional surrender. They left Italy, clearly having not been authorized to make such an offer.

  If it was to be war then, given Jugurtha’s detailed knowledge of the Roman political and military systems, we must examine what his options and strategies would have been. It is clear from the sending of further emissaries that he realized that although war had been declared, the situation did not necessarily have to result in open warfare. Clearly his best option lay in avoiding full-scale warfare and negotiating a settlement that left him with at least a throne of Numidia, if not the only one. If he engaged Rome in combat, regardless of the outcome, Rome would have no option but to remove him. Thus any Roman invasion would have to be met by a policy of falling back and negotiating a limited submission. Whether this would involve illicit payments to Roman commanders is unclear, but it certainly would have helped.

  Again, we have no clear idea of the scale of the Numidian army. What we must acknowledge is that the terrain of Numidia was desert plains, which suited the Numidian light cavalry rather than the Roman heavy infantry.

  The Campaign of 111 BC – The Phoney War

  Given the above points it is not surprising that the campaign of 111 BC turned into a ‘phoney war’, with neither side committed to full-scale warfare. Sallust only provides brief details of the campaign. Bestia gathered his army at Rhegium and transferred them from there to Sicily and from Sicily to Roman Africa. Once in Roman Africa he mounted a swift offensive against the nearest Numidian towns, though again we are not told which ones. The only details we are given is that a number of towns were taken by storm, resulting in a large number of prisoners being taken.188