The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
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lived between the Danube and the Dniester, in 29 B.C.. As long as they confined their hostilities to the Moesians, Dardanians, and Triballi, the matter did not concern the governor of Macedonia, Marcus Licinius Crassus, grandson of the rival of Pompey and Caesar. But when they attacked the Dentheletae, allies of Rome, he was called on to interfere. The Bastarnae retired at his command, but he followed them as they retreated and defeated them where the river Cibrus flows into the Danube. But at the same time he turned his arras against Moesia, and reduced, not without considerable toil and hardships, almost all the tribes of that country. He had also to deal with the Serdi, who dwelt in the centre of the peninsula under Mount Scomius, in the direct way between Macedonia and Moesia. These he conquered, and took their chief place, Serdica, which is now Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. He was also compelled to reduce the unfriendly tribes of Thrace. In that country the worship of Dionysus was cultivated with wild enthusiasm, and the possession of one specially venerable grove, consecrated to that god—perhaps the very grove in which Alexander the Great had once sacrificed— was a subject of discord between two powerful rival tribes, the Odrysae and the Bessi. The Bessi were then in possession; but Crassus took the sacred place from them and gave it to the friendly Odrysae, and constituted their prince the representative of Roman power in Thrace, with lordship over the other peoples, and protector of the Greek towns on the coast. Thus Thrace became a dependent kingdom.
That Moesia also became, at first, a dependency of the same kind, before she became a regular province, seems likely. The Greek cities on the coast were probably placed under the protection of the Thracian kingdom, while the rest of Moesia and Triballia may have been united under one of the native princes. After 27 B.C. it would doubtless have devolved upon the governor of Illyricum, no longer upon the governor of Macedonia, to intervene in case of need.
The submission of the Thracians was not permanent, and the Odrysians were not equal to the task imposed upon them. The Bessi longed to recover the sanctuary of Dionysus, and a sacred war broke out in 13 B.C., which resulted in the overthrow of the princes of the Odrysae. The suppression of this insurrection ought perhaps to have devolved upon the governor of Illyricum, but he had his hands full in his own province; the proconsul of Macedonia had no army at his disposal. Accordingly recourse was had to the troops stationed in Galatia, and Lucius Piso, the imperial legatus in that province, was summoned to cross into Europe and quell the insurgents who were threatening to invade Asia, having established themselves in the Thracian Chersonese (11 B.C.). Piso put down the revolt successfully, and it was probably soon after this that Moesia was converted into a regular Roman province, though Thrace still remained under the rule of the dependent Odrysian prince Rhoemetalces, who, with his son Cotys, was devotedly attached to Rome and unpopular in Thrace.
Thrace, though not yet Greek, must even now be reckoned to the Greek half of the Roman world. But its close connection with Moesia naturally led us to consider it in this place, rather than in the following chapter. Moesia itself belonged partly to the Latin, and partly to the Greek division. The cities which grew under Roman influence in western Moesia were Latin; the cities on the coast of the Pontus were Greek, and formed a distinct world of their own. But most of the inhabitants of these cities were not Greeks, but Getae and Sarmatians, and even the true Greeks were to some extent barbarised by intercourse with the natives. The poet Ovid, who was banished to Tomi, gives a lively description of the wild life there—the ploughmen ploughing armed, the arrows of ferocious marauders flying over the walls of the town, natives clad in skins, and equipped with bow and quiver, riding through the streets. Getic continued to be spoken in Moesia long after the Roman conquest, like Illyric in Illyricum; and Ovid says that it was quite needful for any one resident in Tomi to know it. He wrote himself a poem in the Getic tongue; and we should be glad to barter some of his Latin elegiacs for his exercise in that lost language.
The subjugation of the vast extent of territory, reaching from the sources of the Rhine to the mouths of the Danube, was a military necessity. The conquest of each province, while it served some immediate purpose at the time, was also part of an immense scheme for the defence of the Empire from the Northern Ocean to the Euxine. It was designed that the armies in Pannonia should be in constant touch with the armies on the Rhine, and that operations in both quarters should be carried out in connection. Central Europe and the Germans who inhabited it presented a hard and urgent problem to the Roman government; but before telling how they attempted to solve it, it will be well to complete our survey of the subject and dependent lands.
Chapter VII.
Provincial Administration Under Augustus — The Eastern Provinces and Egypt
The Romans, who were the teachers of the peoples whom they conquered in the West, were themselves pupils in the East. In Gaul, in Spain, in northern Italy, in Illyricum they broke new ground and appeared as the pioneers of civilization; but in the eastern countries which came under their dominion they entered upon an inheritance, which they were called upon indeed to preserve and improve, but where there was no room for them to originate new ideas of development. Rome merely carried on the work of Alexander the Great and his successors, and she was proud to be entrusted with the task. She not only left Greek what was already Greek, but she endeavored to spread Greek civilization in those parts of her eastern lands where it had not taken root. The sole exception to this rule of policy was Sicily; and this was due to its geographical position.
The subject lands of the east naturally fall into four groups: (1) Macedonia and Greece; (2) Asia Minor, in connection with which may be considered the Tauric peninsula; (3) Syria and the neighboring vassal kingdoms; (4) Egypt, which stands by itself both geographically and because, strictly speaking, it was not a province.
SECT. I. — MACEDONIA, ACHAIA, AND THE FREE GREEK STATES
The institution of the Empire was attended by a change in the administration of Macedonia and Greece, which under the Republic had formed one large province. Augustus divided it into two smaller provinces, Macedonia and Achaia, both of which he assigned to the senate. This division, however, did not altogether coincide with the boundary between Greece and Macedonia. The province of Achaia was smaller than Hellas, and the new province of Macedonia larger than Macedonia proper. For Thessaly, Aetolia, Acarnania and Epirus were placed under the rule of the northern proconsul. Thus Mount Oeta, instead of Mount Olympus, was the boundary between Macedonia and Greece.
Imperial Macedonia was thus smaller in extent and importance than republican Macedonia. It also lost its military significance as a frontier district, through the extension of Roman rule over the neighboring lands north and east. Greek civilization, though it had flourished for centuries in the old cities on both the seas which wash the coasts of Macedonia, never penetrated far into the highlands. Eastward of Apollonia and Dyrrhachium, northward of Thessalonica and the Chalcidic peninsula, there were few Greek cities to form centres of culture. Augustus settled colonies of Roman citizens in many of the old Greek towns; in Dyrrhachium, the old Epidamnos, and in Byllis, on the Adriatic coast; in Thracian Philippi; in Pella; in Dium on the Thermaic gulf; in Cassandria on the bay of Pagasae. But his purpose was merely to provide for veteran soldiers, not to Romanize the province. In general, the towns retained their Macedonian constitutions and politarchs; and they formed a federation with a diet (koinon). The capital of the province was Thessalonica, and this alone stamped it as Greek.
Thessaly, although placed under the government of the proconsul of Macedonia, held a position quite apart from the lands north of Mount Olympus. It was a purely Greek district, and its cities formed a federation of their own, distinct from that of Macedonia. The diet used to meet in Larisa, whose fertile plain was so famous. Julius Caesar had accorded the right of free self-government to all the Thessalians, but, for some act of misconduct, Augustus withdrew the privilege; and the Thessalians, with the single exception of Pharsalus, were degraded from the position of allies to that of subjects.
The Roman government—whether republican or imperial—always treated the venerable cities of Greece with a consideration and tenderness, which they showed to no other conquered lands. The reverence which was inspired in the Romans