أنت هنا

قراءة كتاب The Provinces of the Roman Empire, v. 1 From Caesar to Diocletian

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
The Provinces of the Roman Empire, v. 1
From Caesar to Diocletian

The Provinces of the Roman Empire, v. 1 From Caesar to Diocletian

تقييمك:
0
لا توجد اصوات
المؤلف:
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 6

was needful in these quarters was done, he set to work on his comprehensive task, we have now to tell.

Subjugation of the Alps.Italy, which bore sway over three continents, was still, we have said, by no means absolutely master in her own house. The Alps, which sheltered her on the north, were in all their extent, from one end to the other, filled with small and but little civilised tribes of Illyrian, Raetian, or Celtic nationality, whose territories in part bordered closely on those of the great towns of the Transpadana—that of the Trumpilini (Val Trompia) on the town of Brixia; that of the Camunni (Val Camonica above the Lago d’Iseo) on the town of Bergomum; that of the Salassi (Val d’Aosta) on Eporedia (Ivrea)—and whose neighbourhood was by no means wont to be peaceful. Often enough conquered and proclaimed at the Capitol as vanquished, these tribes, in spite of the laurels of the men of note that triumphed over them, were constantly plundering the farmers and the merchants of Upper Italy. The mischief was not to be checked in earnest until the government resolved to cross the Alpine chain and bring its northern slope also under their power; for beyond doubt numbers of these depredators were constantly streaming over the mountains to pillage the rich adjoining country. In the direction of Gaul also similar work had to be done; the tribes in the upper valley of the Rhone (Valais and Vaud) had indeed been subdued by Caesar, but are also named among those that gave trouble to the generals of his son. On the other side, the peaceful border–districts of Gaul complained of the constant incursions of the Raeti. The numerous expeditions arranged by Augustus on account of these evils do not admit, or require, historical recital; they are not recorded in the triumphal Fasti and do not fall under that head, but they gave to Italy for the first time settled life in the north. We may mention the subjugation of the already named Camunni in 73816. by the governor of Illyria, and that of certain Ligurian tribes in the region of Nice in 74014., because they show how, even about the middle of the Augustan age, these insubordinate tribes pressed directly upon Italy. If the emperor subsequently, in the collective report on his imperial administration, declared that violence had not been wrongfully employed by him against any of these small tribes, this must be understood to the effect that cessions of territory and change of abode were demanded of them, and they resisted the demand; only the petty cantonal union formed under king Cottius of Segusio (Susa) submitted without a struggle to the new arrangement.

Subjugation of the Raeti. The southern slopes and the valleys of the Alps formed the arena of these conflicts. The establishment of the Romans on the north slope of the mountains and in the adjoining country to the northward followed in 73915.. The two step–sons of Augustus reckoned as belonging to the imperial house, Tiberius the subsequent emperor, and his brother Drusus, were thereby introduced into the career of generalship for which they were destined; very secure and very grateful were the laurels put before them in prospect. Drusus penetrated from Italy up the valley of the Adige into the Raetian mountains, and achieved here a first victory; for the farther advance his brother, then governor of Gaul, lent him a helping hand from Helvetia; on the lake of Constance itself the Roman triremes defeated the boats of the Vindelici; on the emperor’s day, the 1st August 739 15., in the vicinity of the sources of the Danube, fought the last battle, whereby Raetia and the land of the Vindelici—that is, the Tyrol, East Switzerland, and Bavaria—became thenceforth constituent parts of the Roman empire. The emperor Augustus had gone in person to Gaul to superintend the war and the organisation of the new province. At the point where the Alps abut on the Gulf of Genoa, on the height above Monaco, a monument commanding a wide prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea, and not even yet wholly effaced, was erected some years later by grateful Italy to the emperor Augustus, because under his government all the Alpine tribes from the Upper to the Lower Sea—the inscription enumerates forty–six of them—had been brought under the power of the Roman people. It was no more than the simple truth; and this war was what war ought to be—the guardian and the guarantee of peace.

Organisation of Raetia.A task more difficult doubtless than that of the war proper was the organisation of the new territory; the more especially as considerations of internal policy exerted to some extent a very disturbing influence on it. Since, as things stood, the preponderance of military power might not be located in Italy, the government had to take care that the great military commands were removed as far as possible from its immediate vicinity; indeed one of the motives that conduced to the occupation of Raetia itself was the desire to remove the command, which probably up to this time could not have been dispensed with in Upper Italy itself, definitively away from that region, as was thereupon actually done. It might most naturally have been expected that there would be created on the north slope of the Alps a great centre for the military posts indispensable in the newly acquired territory; but a course the very opposite of this was followed. Between Italy on the one hand, and the great commands on the Rhine and Danube on the other, there was drawn a girdle of small governorships, which were not merely all filled up by the emperor, but were also filled up throughout with men not belonging to the senate. Italy and the province of southern Gaul were separated by the three small military districts of the Maritime Alps (department of the Maritime Alps and the province of Cuneo), the Cottian Alps with Segusio (Susa) as its chief town, and probably the Graian Alps (East Savoy). Among these the second, administered by the already named cantonal prince, Cottius, and his descendants for a time under the form of clientship,4 was of most importance, but they all possessed a certain military power, and were primarily destined to maintain public safety in the territory concerned, and above all on the important imperial highways traversing it. The upper valley of the Rhone again—that is, the Valais, and the newly conquered Raetia—were placed under a commander of higher standing not in rank, but doubtless in power; a corps, relatively speaking, considerable was here for the time being indispensably requisite. In order, however, to provide for its being diminished as far as possible, Raetia was in great measure depopulated by the removal of its inhabitants. The circuit was closed by the similarly organised province of Noricum, embracing the largest part of what is now German Austria. This wide and fertile region had submitted without substantial resistance to the Roman rule, probably in the form of a dependent principality established in the first instance, but with its prince erelong giving place to the imperial procurator, from whom, for that matter, he did not essentially differ. Some, at all events, of the Rhenish and Danubian legions had their fixed quarters in the immediate neighbourhood, on the one hand of the Raetian frontier at Vindonissa, on the other of the Norican frontier at Poetovio, obviously to keep in check the adjoining province; but in that intermediate region as little were there armies of the first rank with legions under senatorial

الصفحات