The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
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the original province may be mentioned Clupea, and Hippo Diarrhytos; in Numidia, Cirta (Constantine) and Sicca. In Roman civilization, Mauritania vas far behind her eastern neighbors; but Augustus did much in establishing colonies, chiefly on the coast. These Roman towns of Mauretania owed no allegiance to the native king, but depended directly on the governor of the neighboring province.
Besides the Phoenician towns, and the towns on Italian model, whether municipia or colonies, there were also native Libyan communities; but these stood directly under the control of the Roman governors, or sometimes were placed under special Roman prefects. The language of the native Berbers was still spoken chiefly in the regions which the Romans least frequented; it was treated by the conquerors like the Iberian in Spain and the Celtic in Gaul. The language of communication throughout northern Africa was Phoenician; but Rome refused to recognize this Asiatic tongue as an official language, as she had recognized Greek in her eastern provinces. In their local affairs the communities might use Phoenician; but once they entered into imperial relations, Latin was prescribed. It might have been thought that Greek, which was better known in Africa than Latin when the Romans came, would have been adopted there as the imperial language; but the government decreed that Africa, like Sicily, was to belong to the Latin West. It is instructive to observe that, while the name of the Greek queen of Mauretania appears on coins in Greek, that of her husband, who was regarded as an imperial official, is always in Latin.
Africa was fertile in fruit, though her wine could not compete with the produce of Spain and Italy. In corn she was especially rich and shared with Egypt and Sicily the privilege of supplying Rome. The purple industry was still active, chiefly in the little island of Gerba, not destined, indeed, to become as famous as the island of Tyre. Juba introduced this industry on the western coast of his kingdom. The general wellbeing of the land has ample witnesses in the remains of splendid structures which have been found there, in all parts, such as theatres, baths and triumphal arches.
From Africa we pass to another province in which Rome was the heiress of Carthage. Sardinia had ceased to look to her African ruler in 238 B.C., and had become, seven years later, a Roman province, the earliest except Sicily. In the division of the provinces in 27 B.C., Sardinia and Corsica fell to the senate and Roman people; but the descents of pirates forced Augustus to take the province into his own hands in 6 A.D., and commit it to the protection of soldiers. He did not place it, however, under a legatus of senatorial rank, but only under a, procurator of equestrian rank. It was destined to pass again to the senate under Nero, but returned to the Emperor finally in the reign of Vespasian. These islands, though placed in the midst of civilization, were always barbarous and remote. The rugged nature of Corsica, the pestilential air of its southern fellow, did not invite settlements or visitors; they were more suited to be places of exile, and they were used as such. Augustus sent no colonies thither, and did not visit them himself. The chief value of Sardinia lay in its large production and export of grain.
Very different was the other great island of the Mediterranean, the oldest of all the provinces of Rome, the land whose conquest led to the further conquests of Sardinia and of Africa herself. It was in Sicily that the younger Caesar established his position in the west; his recovery of the land, on which Rome depended for her grain, first set his influence and popularity on a sure foundation. As Augustus, he visited it again (B.C. 22), and, although it was a senatorial province, ordered its affairs, by virtue of his mains imperium, at Syracuse; perhaps it was in memory of this visit that he gave the name of Syracuse to a room in his house which he used as a retreat when he wished to suffer no interruption. Roman policy had decreed that Sicily was to belong to the Latin West, not to the Greek East, with which once she had been so constantly connected; and for centuries to come, embosomed in the centre of the Empire, she plays no part in history, such as she had played in the past and was destined to play again in the distant future.
SECT. V. — RAETIA, NORICUM AND THE ALPINE DISTRICTS
From the province adjoining Italy on the south, we pass to the lands on its northern frontier, which it devolved upon Augustus to conquer and to shape. The towns of northern Italy were constantly exposed to the descents of unreclaimed Alpine tribes, who could not be finally quelled as long as they possessed a land of refuge beyond the mountains, among the kindred barbarians of Raetia. For the security of Italy it was imperative to subdue these troublesome neighbors, and in order to do so effectively it was necessary to occupy Raetia and Vindelicia. This task was accomplished without difficulty in 15 B.C., by the stepsons of the Emperor. Drusus invaded Raetia from the south, and vanquished the enemy in battle. Tiberius, who was then governor of Gaul, marched from the north to assist him, and the Vindelici were defeated in a naval action on the waters of the Lake of Brigantium. The tribes of the “restless Genauni” and the “swift Breuni” appear to have played a prominent part in the Vindelician war. The decisive battle which gave Raetia to Rome was fought near the sources of the Danube, under “the fortunate auspices” of Tiberius, on the 1st of August. By these campaigns the countries which corresponded to Bavaria, Tyrol, and eastern Switzerland became Roman; a new military frontier was secured, and direct communications were established between northern Italy and the upper Danube and upper Rhine. The military province of Raetia was placed under an imperial prefect, and the troops which used to be stationed in Cisalpine Gaul could now be transferred to an advanced position. Augusta Vindelicum was founded as a military station near the frontier of the new province, and still preserves under the name Augsburg the name of the ruler who did so much for Romanizing western Europe. For Romanizing Raetia itself, indeed, neither he nor his successors did much; no Roman towns were founded here, as in the neighboring province of Noricum.
The conquest of the dangerous Salassi, who inhabited the valley of the Duria, between the Graian and Pennine Alps, was successfully accomplished by Terentius Murena, brother-in-law of Maecenas in 25 B.C. The people was exterminated, and a body of praetorian soldiers was settled in the valley, through which roads ran over the Graian Alps to Lugudunum, and over the Pennine into Raetia. The new city was called Augusta Praetoria; the Emperor’s name survives in the modern Aosta, whore the old Roman walls and gates are still to be seen. The western Alps between Gaul snd Italy were formed into two small districts, the Maritime Alps, and the Cottian Alps, of which the former was governed by imperial prefects. At first the Cottian district formed a dependent state, not under a Roman commander, but under its own prince Cottius, from whom it derived its name (regnum Cottii). Owing to his ready submission, he was left in possession of his territory, with the title praefectus civitatium. His capital Segusio survives as Susa, and the arch which he erected in honor of his over-lord Augustus (8 B.C.) is still standing. Through this “prefecture” (as it seems to have been) ran the Via Cottia from Augusta Taurinorum (Turin) to Arelate (Arles). The pacification of the Alps, though it presented nothing brilliant to attract historians, conferred a solid and lasting benefit on Italy, and Italy gratefully recognized this by a monument which she set up in honor of the Emperor on a hill on the Mediterranean coast, near Monaco. The reduction of 46 Alpine peoples is recorded in the inscription, which has been preserved.
Few relics of the Roman occupation have been found in Raetia; it is otherwise with the neighboring province of Noricum, which included the lands now called Styria and Carinthia, along with a part of Carniola and most of Austria. Here traffic had prepared the way for Roman subjugation; Roman customs and the Latin tongue were known beyond the Carnic Alps, and when the time came for the land to become directly dependent on Rome, no difficulty was experienced. An occasion presented itself in 16 B.C. when some of the Noric tribes joined their neighbours the Pannonians in a plundering incursion into Istria. At first treated as a dependent kingdom, Noricum soon passed into the condition of an imperial province under a praefect or procurator, but continued to be called regnum Noricum. No legions were stationed in either Raetia or Noricum, only auxiliary troops; but the former province was held in check by lesions of the Rhine army at Vindonissa, and Noricum was likewise surveyed by legions of the Panuonian army, stationed at Poetovio, on the Drava (Drave). The organization of Noricum on the model of Italy was carried out by the Emperor Claudius. The land immediately beyond the Julian Alps, with the towns of Emona and Nauportus, belonged to Illyricum, not to Noricum, but it subsequently became a part of Italy.
The occupation of Raetia and Noricum was of great and permanent importance for the military defence of the Empire against the barbarians