It does seem to have been fairly common by the late first
century AD to form the first line of infantry from auxiliary troops, whilst the
legions formed the second and subsequent lines. This was certainly logical, for
the higher organization of the legions, with ten cohorts coming under the
command of a legate and being used to operating together (unlike auxiliary
cohorts which were all independent units), made them easier for the army
commander to control. For this reason legionaries were more effective as
reserve troops to be committed as and when the fighting line needed
reinforcement. In some cases, the battle may have been won by the auxiliaries
without the need for any reserves. It is impossible to tell whether this was
the case at Tapae in AD 101. It is equally possible that the sculptors chose
simply to represent the opening phase of the battle begun when auxiliary
infantry and cavalry launched an attack on the enemy. Dio tells us that the
fighting was extremely fierce and that victory cost the Romans heavy
casualties. When the Roman medical aid stations – medics are shown treating soldiers
in one of the later scenes on the Column – ran out of bandages, Trajan sent
them much of his own store of clothes to cut into strips and make up the
shortage. To commemorate the fallen, he also established an altar on the site
of the battle.
Following up on their success, the Romans are shown
continuing the advance and putting captured settlements to the torch. The
parapet of one Dacian fort is shown decorated with a row of heads mounted on
poles, whilst in front of the rampart are stakes concealed in pits, resembling
the ‘lilies’ made by Caesar’s men at Alesia. Dio tells us that in one such
captured fort the Romans found standards and equipment captured from Fuscus’
army. The Romans then cross a river, this time without the benefit of a bridge.
One legionary is shown wading through the water with his armour and equipment
carried in the rectangular shield raised over his head. After this Trajan
addresses another parade, before meeting with a group of Dacian ambassadors,
and subsequently a group of native women. Then the action moves to another area
as the Column shows Dacian warriors and Sarmatian cataphracts swimming – and in
some cases drowning in the attempt – across the Danube to attack some Roman
garrisons held by auxiliary troops. One group of enemies employ a battering ram
with an iron tip shaped like the animal’s head in an effort to breach a fort’s
wall, and this may perhaps be an indication of the knowledge of siege
techniques which Decebalus had acquired from deserters and the treaty with Domitian.
In response to this new threat, we see Trajan and a mixture
of praetorian guardsmen and auxiliaries embarking on a warship and a barge.
They are bareheaded, wearing travelling cloaks (paenulae) and burdened with
bundles – perhaps folded tents or simply supplies. The force moves along the
Danube, then disembarks. Trajan is always at their head, and rides with a group
of auxiliary infantry, cavalry and barbarian irregulars to hunt for the enemy
raiding force. Two auxiliary cavalrymen seem to report to the emperor –
presumably scouts who have found the Dacians – and this is followed by a massed
Roman cavalry attack. Surprise appears complete – the goddess of Night is shown
at the top of the scene suggesting an attack under cover of darkness – and the
Sarmatians and Dacians are routed and cut down around their four-wheeled
wagons. Caesar noted that Gallic armies were always accompanied by carts
carrying their families, and it is possible that the Dacians followed a similar
practice. However, it may be that these scenes represent not a raiding force,
but a migration by some of the local peoples, perhaps tribes allied to
Decebalus.
The Adamklissi metopes also show fighting around barbarian
wagons and a dramatic Roman cavalry charge led by a senior officer, perhaps
Trajan himself. Although cruder in style, these reliefs are less stylized than
those on the Column and appear to show three distinct types of barbarian,
probably Sarmatians, Bastarnae and Dacians. It is possible that the Adamklissi
metopes correspond with these scenes on the Column, but they might equally
depict entirely different events.
After this Roman victory Trajan is seen receiving another
Dacian embassy, this time consisting of aristocratic ‘cap-wearers’ (pileati)
rather than the socially inferior warriors who were sent by Decebalus at the
start of the war. Dio mentions several attempts at negotiation, which failed
due to Decebalus’ mistrustful nature and, most likely, the uncompromising
nature of Roman demands. This is followed by a major battle, in which
legionaries are shown fighting alongside auxiliaries. The Roman troops are
supported by a scorpion mounted in a cart drawn by a team of two mules and
known as a carroballista. Trajan supervizes from behind the fighting line, an
auxiliary presenting him with a captive – perhaps one he had captured
personally. Behind him is the famous field dressing-station scene, which may
mean that Dio’s story about the bandages should be associated with this battle
rather than the earlier encounter. As always with the Column, we simply cannot
know.
After the defeat of the Dacians – many of whom are shown
held captive in a compound – Trajan mounts a tribunal to address his paraded
soldiers, and then sits on a folding camp chair to dole out rewards to brave auxiliaries.
Yet in the midst of these scenes of Roman celebration is a bleaker scene off to
the side, where several bound, naked men are brutally tortured by women. The
men are most probably captured Roman soldiers and the women Dacians – in many
warrior societies the task of humiliating and killing with torture enemy
captives has often been performed by the women of the tribe. The scene may well
be intended to show that the war was still not finished, for such a savage
enemy needed to be defeated utterly.
At this point the narrative of the Column contains a clear
break, perhaps indicating the end of the first year’s campaigning, so that
subsequent scenes should be assigned to AD 102. Another river journey is shown,
then a column of legionaries marches across a bridge of boats and two Roman
armies join together. In these and the following sections we see Trajan
formally greeting arriving troops, making speeches to parades, taking part in
another suovetaurilia sacrifice to Mars, receiving Dacian embassies, and accepting
a prisoner or other trophies brought to him by soldiers. As the army advances
through the mountains, making roads, building forts, fighting battles and
besieging forts, the emperor is always with them, watching, directing and
inspiring. He does not wield a tool or a weapon to join the soldiers in their
tasks, for his role is to direct their efforts rather than share in them.
Eventually the Romans overcome the difficult terrain and their stubborn and
ferocious enemies. The First Dacian War ends with the formal surrender of
Decebalus and the Dacians, kneeling or standing as suppliants before the
emperor, who sits on a tribunal surrounded by the massed standards of his
praetorian guard. Then Trajan stands on this or another tribunal to address his
parading soldiers. Trophies and the goddess Victory mark the end of the
conflict.
The peace was to prove temporary. Decebalus agreed to the
loss of some territory, gave up his siege engines and engineers, handed over
Roman deserters and promised not to recruit any more of these. In most respects
the war had ended in an entirely satisfactory way for the Romans, with their
enemy reduced to the status of a subordinate ally, and Trajan was justified in
taking the honorary title Dacicus. Yet in the following years Decebalus broke
most of the terms, beginning to rebuild his army and strengthen his power,
occupying some of the lands of the Iazyges, a Sarmatian people, without seeking
Roman approval for this expansion. The king was clearly not behaving in an
appropriate manner for a Roman ally and war, which was threatened in 104, was
openly renewed in 105 when the Dacians began to attack some Roman garrisons.
The commander of the most important garrison, Cnaeus Pompeius Longinus – a
former legatus Augusti who may still have been holding this rank – was
treacherously imprisoned during negotiation. However, Decebalus’ attempts to
use him as a hostage came to nothing when the Roman managed to obtain poison
and committed suicide. At some point the Dacian also enlisted a group of
deserters to assassinate the emperor, but this plan also failed.
Trajan was in Italy when the Second Dacian War erupted, and
the Column’s narrative begins with his voyage across the Adriatic to be greeted
by local dignitaries and the wider population. Two scenes of sacrifice follow.
Even greater forces seem to have been mustered for the Second War. Trajan
raised two new legions which were named after him, II Traiana Fortis and XXX
Ulpia Victrix, both of which probably served in the Second War, although it is
unclear whether they took part in the First. In the conventional Roman way the
emperor combined force with vigorous diplomatic activity in AD 105, accepting
the surrender of individual Dacian chieftains who abandoned their king, and
negotiating with ambassadors from all neighbouring peoples. Decebalus appears
to have had far fewer allies as a result. Even so the Column shows a heavy
attack against some auxiliary outposts, which held out until relieved by a
force led by Trajan himself.
The main Roman offensive may not have been launched until
106, and most probably followed a different route to the earlier campaign. It
began with another sacrifice on the bank of the Danube, before the army crossed
the river at Dobreta. This time they did so not on a temporary bridge of boats,
but on a monumental arched bridge, built in stone and timber and supported by
twenty piers each 150 feet high, 160 feet in width and 170 feet apart. It was
designed by Apollodorus of Damascus – who would later plan Trajan’s Forum
complex and presumably had much to do with the construction of the Column – and
built by the soldiers. A roadway was cut into the cliffs of the Danube to
permit easier approach to the bridge. Dio’s account describes this feat of
engineering in loving detail strongly reminiscent of Caesar’s account of his
bridge across the Rhine. It was a great and magnificent victory for Roman
engineering, in its way as admirable to the Romans as any feat of arms. The
Column provides a detailed, if stylized depiction of the bridge as the
background to the scene of sacrifice.
After this Trajan joins the army – the soldiers are shown
cheering him enthusiastically, much as Velleius described the legionaries
welcoming Tiberius – takes part in another suovetaurilia purification ceremony,
with the ritual processions walking round the camp, and then addresses
legionaries and praetorians at a parade. At a consilium, Trajan briefs and
discusses the campaign with his senior officers. The usual preliminaries over,
the army advances, harvesting grain from the fields to supplement their
supplies. The Column suggests some fighting, though not perhaps as much as in
the First War, and Dio tells the story of an auxiliary cavalryman who,
discovering that his wounds were mortal, left the camp to rejoin the battle and
died after performing spectacular feats of heroism. The culmination of the
campaign was the siege of Sarmizegethusa Regia, the religious and political
centre of the Dacian kingdom set high in the Carpathians. After a stiff resistance,
and it seems an unsuccessful Roman assault, the defenders despaired and set
fire to the town before taking poison. The war was not quite over, but its
issue was no longer in doubt as the Romans pursued the remaining Dacians.
Decebalus was eventually cornered by a group of Roman cavalry scouts, but slit
his own throat rather than be taken alive.
The leader of the Roman patrol was a certain Tiberius
Claudius Maximus, who had joined the army as a legionary before becoming a
junior officer in the auxilia. On the Column he is depicted reaching out to
Decebalus, and by chance his tombstone has survived, carrying an inscription
describing his career and giving another version of the scene. Decebalus was
beheaded and the head taken back to Trajan, who ordered it to be paraded before
the army. The war was over, and victory was completed by the discovery of the
king’s treasure, buried in a river bed, after much labour by Roman prisoners.
A new province was created, guarded by two legions supported
by auxiliaries and with its main centre at the newly founded colony of
Sarmizegethusa Ulpia – a grand city built on fertile land at the foot of the
Carpathians, unlike Decebalus’ mountain fastness. Settlers came from many parts
of the Empire, but especially the eastern provinces, and Roman Dacia soon
prospered. The fate of the Dacians, whether they were completely expelled or
simply absorbed in the more normal way, has been the subject of fierce debate
in recent centuries, most especially amongst the Romanians – contemporary
politics has had a major influence on whether they believe their ancestors to
be Romans or Dacians.
EMPERORS ON CAMPAIGN
A massive programme of propaganda, of which the Forum
complex was only a part, celebrated the victory in Dacia. Had Trajan simply
wanted military glory to confirm his position as emperor, it is unlikely that
he would have sought other opportunities for aggressive warfare. His rule was
as popular as that of any emperor, and subsequent generations preserved his
memory as the Optimus Princeps, the best of emperors, only rivalled in prestige
by Augustus himself. His relations with the Senate – always the most critical
factor in determining a ruler’s treatment in our literary sources – were
generally very good, his rule considered both just and successful. Even
Trajan’s vices – he was prone to infatuations with boys and youths – were
pardoned, since his behaviour never reached a stage which Romans considered
excessive or made him vicious. His decision to launch an invasion of Parthia in
AD 114 was, according to Dio, motivated by a desire to win renown.
Trajan had spent more of his life with the army than most
Roman aristocrats, and certainly appears to have enjoyed the military life. The
pretext for war was, once again, a dispute over the relationship of the
Armenian king to Rome, for a new monarch had been presented with his diadem of
authority by the Parthian ruler and not by a Roman representative. The peace
with Parthia had always been uneasy, since for the Romans their eastern neighbour
represented a deeply unsatisfactory thing – the former enemy who had not been
reduced to subordinate status and remained fully independent and strong. Trajan
appears to have planned to win a permanent victory, for his campaign was from
the beginning far more than simply a struggle to show dominance over Armenia.
Massive Roman and allied forces – some seventeen of the thirty legions went in
their entirety or as a substantial vexillation to the war – were backed by huge
quantities of supplies which had been massed in the east for several years in
preparation for the conflict. At the back of his mind the emperor was eager to
emulate the great conquests of Alexander in the very region through which the
Macedonian king had passed centuries before. The culture of the Roman Empire
was firmly Greco-Roman and the heroes of the Hellenic world every bit as worthy
of emulation as earlier generations of Romans.
Trajan’s eastern war began well, as in successive years he
overran Armenia, Mesopotamia and most of Parthia itself. The Parthian capital
of Ctesiphon and the major city of Seleucia were both captured, after which
Trajan sailed down the Tigris to reach the Persian Gulf. If Trajan had any
plans to follow further in the footsteps of Alexander – and it seems unlikely
that he did – these were then dashed when major rebellions erupted throughout
his newly acquired territories in AD 116. Roman columns had to operate
throughout the new provinces, putting down insurrection. Matters were made
worse by a major rebellion by the Jewish communities in Egypt and other
provinces – though not Judaea itself – which required substantial numbers of
troops to defeat. Trajan himself began a siege of the desert city of Hatra in
Arabia. During the siege, when his own guard cavalry took part in at least one
of the assaults, Trajan himself was almost struck by a missile as he rode past
the walls. Dio notes that the emperor was not wearing any symbols of rank,
hoping not to stand out amongst the other officers, but his age – he was now 60
– and grey hair made his seniority clear. He was missed, but a cavalryman
riding beside him was killed. Hatra withstood the Roman onslaught until
Trajan’s men, desperately short of water and other provisions, withdrew. The
emperor was planning fresh operations when he suffered a stroke and died soon
afterwards.
Trajan was succeeded by his relation Hadrian, but there was
considerable doubt over whether in fact he had formally nominated him before he
died. Thus, at the beginning of his reign, Hadrian’s position was somewhat
insecure, making him reluctant to spend several years away from Rome fulfilling
his predecessor’s eastern ambitions. This, combined perhaps with a feeling that
Rome’s military resources were overstretched, led to the abandonment of the territories
taken from the Parthians. Another casualty was Trajan’s great bridge across the
Danube, which was partially demolished to prevent its ever being taken and used
by an enemy. There were to be no wars of conquest during Hadrian’s reign from
AD 117 to 138, and in most cases the wars which developed in response to
rebellion or attack were fought by the emperor’s legates without his
on-the-spot supervision. Lacking Trajan’s aggressive ambitions, Hadrian
nevertheless spent much of his reign touring the provinces and in particular
visiting and inspecting the army. Dio noted that he ‘subjected the legions to
the strictest discipline, so that, though strong, they were neither
insubordinate or intolerant’. A cult of Disciplina – one of a number of Roman
deities personifying virtues – flourished in the army at this time, especially
with the troops in Britain and Africa, and may well have been encouraged by
Hadrian himself. Even when the army was not at war, the emperor could still
conform to the ideal of the good general by ensuring that the troops were well
trained and ready to fight if necessary. According to Dio:
He personally viewed
and investigated absolutely everything, not merely the usual appurtenances of
camps, such as weapons, engines, trenches, ramparts and palisades, but also the
private affairs of the men serving in the ranks and of the officers themselves
– their lives, their quarters and their habits – and he reformed and corrected
in many cases practices and arrangements for living that had become too
luxurious. He drilled the men for every kind of battle, honouring some and
reproving others, and he taught them all what should be done. And in order that
they should be benefited by observing him, he everywhere led a vigorous life
and either walked or rode on horseback on all occasions … He covered his head
neither in hot weather nor in cold, but alike amid German snows and under
scorching Egyptian suns he went about with his head bare. In fine, both by his
example and his precepts he so trained and disciplined the whole military force
throughout the entire empire that even to-day [i.e. a century later] the
methods introduced by him are the soldiers’ law of campaigning.
Hadrian watched the troops on exercise, just as a commander
did in battle, praising and rewarding skill and criticizing and punishing poor
performance. An inscription set up by an auxiliary soldier named Soranus
survives, recording – albeit in rather poor Latin verse – an incident when the
emperor commended his skill as an archer. Much fuller inscriptions found at
Lambaesis in North Africa include selections from a number of speeches
delivered at a parade of the provincial army as a culmination to a series of
rigorous exercises. Hadrian’s style is very direct, referring to Legio III Augusta
as ‘his’ legion and its commander as ‘his’ legate. He shows a detailed
knowledge of the legion’s recent history, noting that it was seriously under
strength through having detached a cohort for service in a neighbouring
province. He also mentions that it had subsequently sent a cohort, strengthened
by men drawn from the rest of the unit, to reinforce another legion. Stating
that under such conditions it would have been understandable if III Augusta had
failed to meet his high standards, he reinforces his praise by declaring that
they had no need of any excuse. The centurions, especially the senior grades,
are singled out for specific praise. Both in this section of the speech and in
those parts delivered to individual auxiliary units, the emperor repeatedly
pays tribute to the diligence of the legate Quintus Fabius Catullinus. His
address to the cavalry element of a mixed cohort (cohors equitata) gives a good
indication of the style of these speeches:
It is difficult for
the cavalry of a cohort to put on a pleasing display anyway, and especially
difficult not to displease after an exercise performed by an ala; the latter
fills a greater expanse of plain, has more riders to throw javelins, makes
frequent wheels to the right and performs the Cantabrian ride in close
formation, and, in keeping with their higher pay, has superior horses and finer
equipment. However, you have overcome these disadvantages by doing everything
you have done energetically, in spite of the hot temperature; added to this,
you have shot stones from slings and fought with javelins and everywhere
mounted quickly. The special care taken by my legate Catullinus is very
obvious…
Some criticism is contained in the speeches, for instance when
a cavalry unit is reprimanded for pursuing too quickly and falling into
disorder which would have made them vulnerable to a counter-attack. Yet overall
Hadrian sought to encourage his soldiers and make them feel that they and their
units were valued and respected. Apart from the specific details there is
little that would seem out of place in a similar address by a modern general or
manager.
Hadrian’s successor Antoninus Pius was not a military man,
and spent no time on campaign. It was a mark of the security of the time that
he was content to trust his legates to fight the major conflicts of the time.
These were all in response to problems on the frontiers. From the late first
century AD the military bases on the fringes of the Roman Empire had taken on
more and more of an air of permanence, with old timber fortifications and
internal buildings being replaced by stone. Hadrian had taken the process
further in his visits to the provinces, ordering the construction of new
installations and frontier boundaries. In Northern Britain the army laboured to
construct the Wall which bears his name and stretched for 80 Roman miles from
coast to coast. Such barriers were only ever intended to restrict outsiders,
and never to hinder the movements of the Roman army, instead providing them
with secure bases from which to launch aggressive operations. Rome sought to
dominate its neighbours, not merely to repel any invasion or raid on the
provinces, but attempts at permanent occupation of new territory were rare.
