Rivers as boundaries in the “Empire without end”

An ancient perspective on a modern debate

Fig. 1: Caesar’s Rhine Bridge, John Soane (1814).

Pelle Wijker Student number: 10411453 Telephone number: --- E-mail address: ---

Master’s thesis Research Master’s, History Universiteit van Amsterdam

Supervisor: prof. dr. E.A. Hemelrijk Second reader: dr. J.A. van Rossum

14 July 2014

1 Contents General introduction Introduction p. 4 The problem of sources p. 8 Boundaries and their definition p. 10 Landscape and culture p. 11

I. Rivers in Roman religion Introduction p. 14 Sacred water p. 15 River gods p. 20 River crossings and religious boundaries p. 27 Conclusion p. 31

II. Rivers as military and political boundaries Introduction p. 34 The military uses of rivers p. 35 Political boundaries and the borders of the Empire p. 39 Imperium sine fine p. 44 Conclusion p. 48

III. The Rhine Introduction p. 50 Pater Rhenus p. 51 The Rhine as frontier p. 55 Crossing the Rhine p. 59 Conclusion p. 65

General conclusion p. 68

Bibliography p. 70

2

3 General introduction Introduction “Do rivers make good frontiers?” asked the British historian Boris Rankov, provocatively, in a lecture given at a congress of 'Roman frontier studies' in Pecs, Hungary in 2003.1 To his audience, the question will have been a familiar one; indeed, it has been asked and answered, sometimes explicitly and often implicitly, in scholarly works on the frontiers of the Roman Empire for several decades now. To understand why this question was foremost in their minds, one has only to glance at a map to see that the borders of the great Empire, as traditionally described, were for the greater part of its history located largely along three major rivers: the Rhine and Danube in the north, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the Euphrates in the east. Only a number of small areas in the north and east (Britain across the sea and the so-called Agri Decumates between the Rhine and Danube), as well as the long African border on the Sahara desert, appear to have been 'dry frontiers'. Too much stock should not perhaps be placed in these maps we find in schoolbooks and on Wikipedia. Although their function, meaning, and apparent veracity are obvious to the modern observer, it must not be forgotten that the Romans themselves did not have access to maps of this sort.2 As both a reason for and a consequence of this fact, their understanding of the world, their Empire, and its borders, may well have been very different from our own, and rather more complex than these lines on a map might suggest. Indeed, this is what many historians have argued over the past decades.3 Nevertheless, a great many passages in Roman texts do in fact refer, quite simply and explicitly, to the great rivers as demarcating the limits of the Empire.4 Perhaps most famous among these is the assertion by Tacitus that, thanks to the conquests made by Augustus, the Empire was “enclosed by the Ocean or distant rivers”.5 The complex debate on the river frontiers of the Roman Empire, in which this thesis is engaged, can perhaps be boiled down to the essential question of how seriously and how literally we ought to take statements like this. Rankov's answer to his own titular question was a resounding “yes”: rivers do make good frontiers, and the Rhine and Danube were indeed the linear borders of the Empire. In other words: Tacitus was spot on. This may have come as somewhat of a surprise to his colleagues, however, because over the past few decades a fairly broad consensus has emerged in the field which holds that rivers are poor lines of defence, and that the great northern rivers functioned not as boundaries or military frontiers, but as lines of communication and transport in a broad and vaguely defined

1 Rankov (2005). See also Austin & Rankov (1995), p 173-180. 2 Nicolet (1991), Brodersen (2001), Salway (2001). 3 See below. 4 See especially Chapter II, “Political boundaries and the borders of the Empire”, below. 5 Mari Oceano aut amnibus longinquis saeptum imperium. Tacitus, Annals 1.9 (English transl. J. Jackson 1925-1937). 4 'frontier zone'.6 According to this theory, passages by Roman authors that seem to contradict this interpretation by referring to the Rhine or Danube as a meaningful boundary, like Tacitus' cited above, reflected little more than literary tropes, and any reference to rivers as boundaries were made out of convention and bureaucratic convenience – after all, the visible line of a river is simply an easy line to point to and describe – rather than having any stronger meaning.7 This consensus, which can still in some ways be recognized in Brian Campbell’s recent benchmark work on the subject of rivers in the Roman Empire, Rivers and the power of ancient Rome,8 is the product of a debate that can be traced to the highly influential yet controversial work of American strategist Edward Luttwak in the 1970's. In his book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire he attempts to discern a consistent frontier strategy in three centuries of Roman imperial policy. The great rivers were a key part of this strategy; according to Luttwak, the emperors understood rivers to be rational military boundaries, and aiming to establish a system of 'scientific' boundaries, they expanded the Empire to the banks of Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates, but no further.9 The fortifications they constructed there were intended to accommodate a flexible and pre- emptive – as opposed to static – yet essentially defensive strategy. In Luttwak's system, these great rivers acted as definitive boundaries, and rationally so.10 Luttwak's work was criticized by historians on nearly all fronts, however. The very idea of a 'grand strategy' behind the wars and policies of the various emperors quickly fell out of favor, especially after an innovative study by Claude Nicolet in 1991, which demonstrated that the Romans did not possess the accurate geographic knowledge to implement any rational geopolitical strategy in the modern sense of the term.11 More importantly for the purposes of this thesis, though, his assertion that rivers were rational boundaries was firmly rejected. In 1987, V.A. Maxfield stated categorically that rivers are in fact “militarily weak”. Instead of operating as a natural line of defence or separation, they act as links between peoples on both sides: “they are highways which unite, not barriers which divide.”12 This maxim has taken on an almost canonical status in the historiography on the subject. Not the least among those who followed it was C.R. Whittaker, whose work in the 1990's essentially established the current consensus.13 In his model, the great northern rivers were not truly

6 Formulated most definitively by Whittaker (1994, 2004), see below. 7 For a recent example of this analysis of the sources, see Campbell (2012), p 53, 63, 98-99. 8 See note 7, above. At other times Campbell is almost entirely in agreement with my argument, although he fails to draw clear conclusions in response to the debate. See Campbell (2012), p 186-199. 9 Luttwak (1976), p 60. 10 Luttwak (1976), p 78. 11 Nicolet (1991). See for example Whittaker (1994), p 66-67. 12 Maxfield (1987), cited in Rankov (2005), p 175. 13 Whittaker (1994). See also Whittaker (2004). He was not alone, of course, and earlier works had contributed to this 5 boundaries at all; instead they were only a part of a broader ‘frontier zone’ that stretched well beyond the rivers themselves. Whittaker agrees with Maxfield, then, that rivers do not separate peoples, but bring them together. Moreover, in the military sphere they disappoint and cannot be held a defensive line – although, as Rankov points out, 14 he offers little in the way of evidence for this statement – and the legionary camps and other fortifications along their banks were intended not to defend the Empire’s borders from invasion, but to protect the river itself as a logistical asset. In Whittaker’s model, then, rivers were by no means useless in the grand scheme of things, but they were not boundaries; any indication to that purport in the sources reflects little more than convenience, and should not be taken too seriously. It is against this broadly shared understanding of the river frontiers of the Roman Empire, then, that Rankov rebelled. He explains that the difficulty of crossing a river is often underestimated – in fact, it is no easy task to, especially with a large and cumbersome army. Swimming is certainly not an option while carrying heavy weapons and armour, and to bring the whole army across on boats takes a long time, rendering it vulnerable to attack. The only viable option is to build a bridge across the river. This was a task at which the Romans were adept, but their enemies in the north less so. If the bridges were tightly controlled, then – and Rankov cites a number of sources demonstrating Roman caution in this regard – rivers could function quite effectively as military boundaries.15 To Rankov, Roman authors like Tacitus, asserting that the Empire was “enclosed by rivers” should be taken quite seriously after all. Although this all sounds very reasonable to me, and I am generally in agreement with Rankov, I am, like most historians, not a strategist or a military expert. Rankov and I draw the same conclusions, but in different ways – I have no real basis to support one appraisal of the defensive value of rivers over another. More importantly though, Rankov’s argument is still framed by a rationalist, modernist perspective, which presupposes that modern strategic theory is singular and universal, applicable and intelligible at all times throughout history. This is an essential anachronism: whatever our understanding of strategy, however 'rational' it might be, the Romans themselves may well have seen things differently. Rankov himself, to his credit, clearly acknowledges this,16 although I feel he does not entirely escape the issue. Perhaps this is why, a decade later, the consensus has yet to shift in his favour. To my mind, the key to a real breakthrough in this debate can be found in a very short article

version, even before Luttwak – see Mann (1974). 14 Whittaker (1994), p 61. Rankov (2005), p 176. 15 Rankov cites Tacitus, Annals 1.69, Ammianus Marcellinus 24.3.9 (English transl. H.G. Bohn 1862), and Cassius Dio 68.13.5-6 (English transl. E. Cary 1914-1927). 16 Rankov (2005), p 176. 6 by David Braund, dating back to 1996.17 Though he too believes rivers to be “militarily weak”,18 Braund, too, offers a dissenting voice. He invokes Roman ‘environmental psychology’, arguing that the cultural meaning of rivers, including a strong religious component, made them into boundaries in the eyes of the Romans. He concludes that “from a Roman perspective, rivers were indeed natural boundaries in a sense that includes their religiosity, their natural power and their tendency to divide and to bound. When modern strategists leap to the criticism that rivers are inadequate (even non-functional) boundaries and dividers, they miss much of the point which lies embedded in the environmental psychology of the Roman world.”19 In other words, only through a broader understanding of the Roman perception of the world, their culture and the role of rivers therein, can the issue of river frontiers be properly tackled. Sources like Tacitus, which are direct expressions of this perception, should not be so casually dismissed. Though Braund’s call to action, too, has so far gone unheeded, I aim to rectify this situation in this thesis, by elaborating on his theory and working out its argument in greater detail. In what follows, I shall attempt to demonstrate that he is right in emphasizing the specifically Roman cultural perspective in answering the question of rivers as boundaries to the Roman Empire. With this perspective in mind, it shall become apparent that the Romans did in fact have a strong tendency to associate rivers, great and small, with boundaries of various sorts, and that these boundaries were infused with both a religious and a military value. As a consequence, it was perfectly rational for them – regardless of whether it seems rational to us – to build the limes, their borders, along the natural boundaries of Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates. In addition, I will complement Braund’s vision with an analysis of what such a boundary meant and represented in the expansive and imperialistic world of the self-styled “Empire without end”.20 What this thesis will not be is a systematic exposition of the historical development of the frontiers of the Roman Empire and the campaigns that led to their establishment; I am not myself concerned with the issue of ‘grand strategy’ or the reasons the Empire failed to expand further than it did. Nor will it be a detailed analysis of the physical configuration of the frontier, its forts, camps, armies, and fleets. I am interested instead in how the Romans, or at least those among them who wrote the sources available to us, thought about these rivers and their status as boundary, and the cultural background of these patterns of thought. Their historical actions and physical constructions can tell us something of these cultural notions and beliefs as well, of course, and they will not be entirely neglected, but my emphasis will be on the literary sources, like Tacitus, which have clear

17 Braund (1996). 18 Braund (1996), p 43, citing Maxfield. 19 Braund (1996), p 47. 20 Imperium sine fine. Virgil, Aeneid 1.278 (English transl. R. Fagles 2006). 7 and revealing views on the subject that are, to my mind, far too casually dismissed within the current consensus. Above all, then, my aim for this thesis is to promote a new perspective on the issue of river boundaries – or more to the point, an ancient one, that restores these sources to their proper place and context. The structure of this thesis is as follows. In the remaining sections of this introduction, I shall explain my approach to the sources, provide a number of key definitions, and elaborate briefly but crucially on the nature of 'landscape' and how our perception of it is shaped by our cultural background. It is with this understanding that I subsequently venture into the main body of the thesis, which can be divided into two parts. The first and larger section comprises two chapters dealing generally with the Roman perception of rivers as boundaries in different yet interconnected ways. Chapter I is concerned with the cultural background of religion and the divinity of rivers in general, while Chapter II deals with the military uses of rivers and their role as official political boundaries, with an obviously somewhat stronger focus on the three frontier rivers. Together, these chapters intend to demonstrate and explain the fact the Romans believed rivers were natural boundaries. Following this exposition of my general theory, I will, in the second part (Chapter III), test its merit by application to a specific case study: the river Rhine. In so doing, I will illustrate my argument further and simultaneously position it more pointedly within the broader debate, arguing that the Rhine was in fact understood to be a boundary to the Roman Empire.

The problem of sources It is difficult, if not impossible, in the field of ancient history to add anything new in the way of sources; the relatively small number of our sources, and their inherent limitations, are an inescapable reality of our discipline. Certainly on a subject as well-worn as the borders of the Roman Empire, it will be very hard to introduce any relevant, untapped textual sources (for these are my primary concern), and I will not do so here. This is an essentially argumentative, rather than investigative, thesis, and it does not introduce any entirely new facts or pieces of evidence, though it does aim to widen the scope of the debate by emphasizing the broader cultural perception of rivers in the Roman world, in concordance with Braund’s article. Most importantly however, this thesis calls for a reappraisal and a restoration of the evidence already at our disposal. The evidence under review here is of a highly scattered nature. Though there are a few outlying sources from the late Empire and – especially on religious matters – the early Republic, it is centred mostly around the very end of Republican times and the first two centuries of the Imperial (and Common) era. This is due to the simple facts that the borders of the Empire that lie at the heart of this debate were formed during this time, and that the majority of Roman literary 8 sources in general date from this period. Of course, there are no Roman texts available to us that are concerned solely with the subject of rivers and boundaries, giving a full record of the limits of the Empire, how these frontiers functioned, what the function of rivers was in this system, and whether or not these rivers were seen as natural boundaries. In the absence of such a treatise, we are reliant on brief, scattered passages from all sorts of texts that happen to mention rivers in this context. In most cases, I was led to these passages through the citations in previous historical work on the subject; Campbell’s recent book, dealing with virtually all aspects of the river’s place in the Roman world, has been especially useful in this regard.21 I have attempted in all cases to convey the context of these passages as well as possible without being overly tangential. Lastly, it must be acknowledged that 'the Roman' did not of course exist. Any work of cultural history or analysis is to some extent impressionistic and reductionist; culture is too large and complicated a thing to ever fully describe or even grasp, and no culture is monolithic. There is always room for conflicting visions, voices and attitudes. Moreover, for Roman history in particular the sources we have are few and highly skewed towards a small part of Roman society: virtually all of them are products of the urban elite. That should not be taken to mean, however, that nothing can be said about culture. It is certainly unavoidable that within the space afforded by this thesis I can offer only fragments of the full story of the Roman view of the world, its rivers, and its boundaries. Still, I believe these fragments may, taken together and understood in their proper context, demonstrate certain tendencies in Roman thought on landscape that help to explain why their Empire took on the shape it did. Moreover, the image these various sources and passages convey of Roman beliefs about rivers seems to me to be a highly consistent one. It is very telling that those historians who argue that rivers are not, and were not understood to be, natural boundaries, and that the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates were not actually the borders of the Empire at all, usually fail to cite any Roman authors to support this view.22 To the contrary, as I will show, there is a large body of Roman sources that clearly and explicitly declare the opposite: the Empire was bounded, in a number of ways, by rivers, and this appeared entirely rational to their mind. Indeed, although the authors of our sources were, due to their socio-economic background, by no means representative for the whole of Roman society, it can be inferred that their views and arguments at least seemed credible and reasonable to their audience.

21 Campbell (2012). 22 See note 14, above. 9 Boundaries and their definition Let us start with a basic definition: a boundary is an imaginary line in the landscape that demarcates the limits of a certain area. This line may have a very well-defined practical purpose and be marked by constructions like walls, border posts, or boundary stones, or it may be nothing more than a wholly abstract line on a map, imperceptible to the eye. In some cases it might coincide with a pre- existing natural feature, such as a river or a mountain range, but even then, it is crucial to understand that the boundary line itself is in all cases drawn by human hands and the result of human choice. As such, the notion of a natural boundary – a line shaped by nature itself to excel as a boundary – becomes a complicated one. After all, in the strictest sense, natural boundaries do not exist;23 it is not universally self-apparent that rivers should be boundaries, and a boundary line in itself, even one based on natural features, exists and has meaning only in people’s minds. Yet it is precisely this mental reality that I am concerned with in this thesis. I do not mean to categorically prove that rivers are universally natural boundaries – an impossible task – but rather to show that they were considered to be natural boundaries by the Romans, or, in other words, that the authors of our sources had a general tendency to associate rivers with boundaries, and that it seemed 'natural' to them to do so. It is in this context that my use of the term natural boundary should be understood. The same applies to the related concept of the rational boundary.24 I am not interested, as Luttwak and Rankov are, in the 'pure' logic of the strategic pros and cons of choosing a river for a boundary, and whether this is as such a 'rational' choice, but only in what Roman sources reveal about these choices and the reasons for making them. When I myself make use of the term rational boundary, then, it is not a supposed universal rationalism I am referring to, but the particularly Roman rationalism or way of thinking revealed to us by these sources. Lastly, I make reference throughout this thesis to three specific types of boundary: the religious boundary, the military boundary, and the political boundary, though these terms may appear self-explanatory. The first can be defined quite simply as a boundary infused with meaning of a religious nature. Perhaps it defines the limits of a sacred space, or the line itself carries religious significance; supernatural phenomena may be connected to it, and rituals may be involved in its crossing. A military boundary, then, is a boundary line with military significance and a possibly defensive function. I use the term frontier as essentially synonymous with military boundary.25 Lastly, a political boundary, which might in many cases also be referred to simply as a border, is a

23 A fact acknowledged by scholars on both sides of the debate. For example, see Mann (1974), p 513, and Rankov (2005), p 176. 24 Luttwak (1976) uses the term scientific frontier in essentially the same way, but I do not use this term unless referring to Luttwak’s theories. 25 Note that this is quite different from the use of this term by Whittaker (1994, 2004). 10 boundary which separates different political or administrative territories or entities from each other. In the main body of this thesis I will argue that to Roman eyes certain important rivers fulfilled several of these functions at once, and the three categories were in fact intertwined.

Landscape and culture Such a view of boundaries can only be sustained by understanding landscape to be a construct of human imagination and narrative. And it is; although the rivers, mountains and valleys, and even the creatures that dwell there are of course a physical part of reality, the meaning they provide to an observer is culturally determined. Two people of different cultural backgrounds might look at Mount Everest, for example, and see very different things: where the Westerner might consider it a dangerous challenge – something to be overcome by the brave and adventurous – the native Himalayan perhaps sees little more than a massive rock, unfit for farming or habitation. Naturally, their subsequent actions towards this feature of the landscape will differ as well. The Westerner may choose to climb and conquer it, and tell all who will listen about his heroics – or at least marvel at the accomplishments of those more brave than he. The Himalayan, meanwhile, might join such an expedition for the pay, but is more likely simply to laugh at this absurd pastime and stay safely at home. The realization that the landscape and the way we, as a species, make use of it is not a purely physical reality seen through a purely rational lens has many repercussions, and the principle has found applications in many fields in recent decades. History is among these fields, of course; Simon Schama’s Landscape and memory is a classic study of Western thought on landscape.26 Anthropology,27 geography, 28 and archaeology have benefited from this insight as well.29 Still, to my mind this crucial understanding has not been applied with the necessary rigor in the debate over the river frontiers of the Roman Empire. Certainly, it has been convincingly argued that the Romans' lack of precise geographical knowledge – which made them perceive the landscape in ways different from our own – prevented them from adopting a unified 'grand strategy' as Luttwak had seen it.30 But this and other arguments on both sides of the debate are still framed by a modern Western perspective, and the deeper issue has rarely been addressed: the question of whether rivers made sense as boundaries for the Roman Empire cannot be given a meaningful answer solely by modern rationalist geography, which can tell us the measure of a river but not its meaning. It is only

26 Schama (1995). For Roman history, the essential work was done by Nicolet (1991). See also Beagon (1992) and Spencer (2011). 27 Kommers (1994) has been my prime inspiration, see below. 28 Ingold (1993) and Cosgrove (1984). 29 Derks (1998). 30 Nicolet (1991). 11 within the context of Roman culture that the matter can be truly understood. The same point is excellently made in a wholly different context by the Dutch anthropologist Jean Kommers, in an article on the geography of the Australian Aborigines.31 Kommers proposes the term 'mythical geography' for their culturally determined, narrative-based understanding of the landscape, utterly different from our own, and laments the fact that though anthropologists often acknowledge these differences between Western and native conceptions of landscape and geography, their analysis of these differences is made entirely from the perspective of 'objective' Western geography. They apply an essential dichotomy between 'fact' and 'fiction'; only that which corresponds with Western notions is regarded as true geography, while the rest is relegated to other cultural domains – religion, for instance – and so severed from their original context. As a consequence, the essential connection and continuity between these notions is lost. It seems to me that the very same mistake is made by those who argue that the Roman Empire was not in fact bounded by the great rivers of Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates because, based on our modern understanding of geography and strategy, rivers are not rational boundaries. They take into account only those matters which correspond to this modern point of view – the 'rational' and 'objective' strategic factors – and disregard the other, decidedly un-modern meanings the Romans attached to rivers. In this way, they project their own rationalism onto the past, pushing out the less relatable aspects of the Roman worldview and understanding of the landscape – most prominently their religious beliefs concerning the natural world. It is precisely these 'other matters' that I will elaborate on in the first chapter of this thesis, as it is my contention that the role and function of rivers and boundaries within the Roman view of the world cannot be understood without them.

31 Kommers (1994). 12

13 I. Rivers in Roman religion Introduction All things considered, rivers are remarkable things, or in the words of Pliny the Elder, “a truly wondrous provision of nature”:32 they spring from the depths of the earth, often in remote mountainous regions, and spew forth endless quantities of water without ever emptying, as if by magic. The violent noise of their stream, rushing towards the sea, might remind the listener of a roaring bull, and stands in stark contrast to their great visual beauty and serenity, often remarked upon by poets. Yet they possess power beyond mere poetry: rivers bring life, fertility, and sustenance to the communities living on their banks. On the other hand, in some circumstances rivers can be a destructive force too, ravaging the neighbouring lands, destroying their crops and drowning their inhabitants. It is not be wondered at, then, that these mysterious and unpredictable waters have often come to be associated with the supernatural and divine. Indeed, even today some of the world’s rivers, like the Ganges in India and Bangladesh, are revered as sacred in ways that may well have been remarkably familiar to a Roman. If we are to know if rivers were natural boundaries in Roman eyes, we must first understand the cultural meanings they attached to rivers in general. There are many possible avenues of investigation here, but I have chosen to focus on one particular aspect: their religious views on rivers. Roman thought on rivers, in whatever context, cannot in my view be properly understood without recourse to this religious aspect. More to the point, to ask the question if rivers were considered to be natural boundaries is to ask what the nature of a river was seen to be, and to a Roman, a highly significant factor in answering this question would certainly have been the fact that rivers were divine. In this chapter, I will explore this phenomenon, the supernatural characteristics associated with rivers, and their worship. As such, this chapter is detached somewhat from the rest of this thesis, which is more pointedly concerned with river boundaries. Additionally, there is a lot to cover in this chapter, and a certain measure of generalization and lack of nuance is sadly unavoidable. Still, I think the cultural background provided here allows us to better understand the issues discussed in what follows. This chapter is subdivided into three paragraphs. In the first two, I shall discuss the Roman religious conception and worship of rivers along general lines. The first paragraph concerns the role of rivers or their waters in ritual and cult practices of a broad nature, the healing power of river water, and the more specific sacred character of springs, while the second paragraph covers river gods, the deities associated with the river itself, both in their appearance and function in art and

32 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 31.1 (English transl. J. Bostock & H.T. Riley 1855). 14 mythology, and, more importantly, their actual worship in official state religion as well as local cults. The third paragraph deals with the religious significance of crossing a river, and the rituals associated with this act, which illustrate the crucial connection between the divinity of rivers and their function as boundaries.

Sacred water In order to gain some understanding of the way rivers functioned as boundaries in the Roman world, it is vital to take into account their religious function. Before turning to the worship of the rivers as gods in their own right,33 let us first examine the role of rivers in religion in a broader sense. Rivers and their waters had a role to play in the cult of other gods, too, and their sacred character was perhaps not wholly bound to their own divinity. In addition, we cannot neglect to note the specific character of springs, which are of course inextricably linked to rivers and were often the main focus of worship, yet have a number of characteristics that separate them from the course of the river itself. Indeed, the subject of springs is such a compelling and well-attested one, that it certainly deserves a separate treatment. Sadly, as my interest lies primarily with the boundary formed by the river's course, I can only offer a brief overview here of the matter of sacred springs.34 Water had an important role to play in the cult activities of many temples and deities, even those with no obvious thematic connection to rivers, springs, or the sea. This importance is to be found mainly in its use as a cleansing agent. A number of myths related by Ovid in his Fasti, invaluable as ever for the student of Roman religion, will serve to illustrate this phenomenon. In the first, the poet tells the tale of Rome's foundation, beginning with the rape of Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin, by Mars.35 The reader is introduced to Silvia, carrying a pitcher, as she approaches a river.36 Although the details of her task remain elusive, Ovid informs us that she is there “[seeking] water to wash sacred things”.37 This detail is not important for the tale that follows; it would seem that Ovid simply felt the need to provide a narrative reason for Silvia to be alone by the waterside. It is precisely because it is used in this way, however, that we may infer that the act of drawing river water for ritual purposes would appear to his audience a plausible and otherwise unremarkable one. It seems likely, then, that river water performed a purificatory function in the rites of Vesta in reality as well. A second example provided by the Fasti is a rather more obscure myth concerning three

33 See “River gods”, below. 34 Aldhouse-Green (1999) is a thorough and accessible exploration of one such spring. 35 Ovid, Fasti 3.9-78 (English transl. A.S. Kline 2004). 36 The fact that it is a river or stream, rather than a source or well, is evidenced by the use of the word ripa, river bank, in line 13. 37 Ovid, Fasti 3.12: sacra lavaturas petebat aquas. 15 closely connected constellations known as the Raven, the Snake, and the Cup, and apparently intended to explain these names.38 According to this myth, Apollo is preparing a feast for Jupiter, and gives his servant, the raven, a cup and orders it to run an errand for him. However, the hungry raven is distracted by a fig tree, waiting patiently for the fruit to ripen and forgetting his orders. When the bird finally returns to Apollo it carries a snake in its beak, blaming the creature for the delay. Apollo sees through the lie, of course, and curses the raven; as a reminder, the three constellations are placed in the sky. Important for my purposes here is the errand Apollo sends the raven on: he orders the bird to “bring a little water from the running stream”, “so nothing delays the sacred rites”.39 We are not told the exact nature of these rites, but apparently they could not commence without river water, and a similar purificatory use seems probable. It is again the offhanded manner in which the use of water in ritual is referred to – it is used as little more than a plot device – that demonstrates how natural and commonsensical such a use must have seemed to Ovid's audience, and how ubiquitous it must have been. A number of rituals associated with the Tiber and dating from the earliest period of Roman history also involve the purification of ritually unclean things, but in an opposite manner.40 Firstly, at the end of the Vestalia, a festival in honour of Vesta held in June, the waste from the Temple of Vesta, accumulated throughout the year, was deposited into the Tiber and swept away to sea. Ovid mentions this practice as well.41 Secondly, an obscure ritual was performed annually in either March or May, involving the ritual offering of Argei, effigies in the shape of men, apparently representing the people of Rome, to the Tiber. The effigies were collected from the various sections of the city in a procession, and thrown off a bridge into the river in a solemn ceremony presided over by the chief priests. The precise meaning and background of this rite is unclear. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing around the time of Augustus, reports that the ritual was still being performed in his day, and attributed its origin to a myth of Hercules coming to Rome, abolishing human sacrifice, and instituting the annual offering of these effigies to the Tiber as a replacement.42 Victims required cleansing before the ritual of sacrifice could commence, as did people who, prior to their participating in a ritual or entering a sacred place, had been ritually 'contaminated'.43 Not just any water would do for this sacred purpose, however; in order for it to function as a purificatory agent, it had to be 'alive'. That is to say: it had to be running water from a natural

38 Ovid, Fasti 2.243-266. 39 Ovid, Fasti 2.249: ne quid pia sacra moretur. 40 Campbell (2012), p 141 for both of these rituals. 41 Ovid, Fasti 6.226-227, 6.711-714. 42 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.38 (English transl. E. Cary 1937-1950). Ovid, Fasti 5.622-660 also refers to this ceremony. 43 As noted also by Wissowa (1912), who provides an exhaustive list of source references. 16 source, as opposed to channels, aqueducts or cisterns.44 We have seen this evidenced already in the myth of the raven, as Apollo explicitly instructs the bird to fetch “water from the running stream”.45 Similarly, Tacitus, in writing of a restoration of the ruined Temple of the Capitoline Triad under the emperor Vespasian, mentions that prior to the traditional dedicatory sacrifice, the entire temple site was sprinkled with “water drawn from fountains and streams” by the Vestal virgins.46 It appears, then, that not all water was by definition sacred; in itself it was a lifeless substance much like any other. Only when it flowed of its own accord through the landscape or from the earth was it seen to be infused with divine and cleansing power. Incidentally, this association of water with ritual purification is also recognizable, in a more abstract sense, in a topos common to many myths about river deities and other gods:47 a hero drowning in a river or dying near it and being reborn as a god. A famous example of this phenomenon is the deification of Hadrian’s lover Antinous, who drowned in the Nile. Less well- known is a story told of Aeneas, who vanished after a battle near the river Numicius and was presumed dead. Some of his compatriots believed he had ascended to godhood and built a shrine for him, “the father and god of this place, who presides over the waters of the river”.48 In these myths, a flawed, mortal human being is purified and cleansed of his imperfections by the river, and turned into a divine entity free from ritual contamination. In a recent article, Rabun Taylor has argued that this cleansing occurs simultaneously on a personal and a collective scale: in a sense, the hero is sacrificed to the water in order to purify the entire community.49 The use of water in cleansing rituals was almost certainly the primary function of rivers and springs in Roman cult practice. Aside from its use to wash away ritual contamination, however, running water was also popularly believed to have healing properties. Cicero famously wrote, apparently quoting an old proverb, that “as long as a man is at the waters he is never dead”.50 The Greek orator Aelius Aristides, who lived during the second century CE and suffered from poor health throughout his life, was a frequent visitor to rivers and springs. In his Sacred Tales, a chronicle of his continuous quest for treatment for his various illnesses, he mentions no less than fifteen such visits.51 Aelius seems to have placed a particular trust in the curative effects of river bathing. Often, specific rivers were recommended to him for this purpose, and Aelius explicitly offers homage to the river Aisepos in Anatolia. This was clearly not just the behaviour of a lone

44 Wissowa (1912), p 219. See also note 3 on the same page for additional references. 45 Ovid, Fasti 2.250. 46 Tacitus, Histories 4.53 (English transl. C.H. Moore 1925-1937). 47 For river deities, see the following paragraph. 48 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.64. 49 Taylor (2009), with several other examples of this phenomenon as well. 50 Cicero, On the Orator 2.274 (English transl. J.S. Watson 1860): quamdiu ad aquas fuit, numquam est emortuus. 51 Aelius Aristides, Sacred Tales (English transl. C.A. Behr 1981-1986). 17 eccentric: to Aelius' dismay the springs at Cyzicus, also in Anatolia, were highly crowded.52 It must be admitted, however, that Roman opinions varied on the cause of these healing properties. For many, they were obviously tied to the sacred nature of the water or the divinity associated with it. It was, after all, precisely its life-giving powers that linked water to the gods in the first place.53 This popular belief is clearly demonstrated by the votive objects often found at springs, which will be discussed below. For Aelius Aristides, too, the curative properties of rivers and springs were connected to the gods and spirits inhabiting or watching over them; he shows genuine piety in thanking the rivers, nymphs and associated deities. Moreover, his aquatic treatments were divinely inspired by Asclepius, the god of medicine, who repeatedly appeared to him in a series of dreams.54 The Republican scholar Varro, too, writing two centuries earlier, notes that “many sick persons are wont to seek water from the spring” of Juturna, a Roman water-deity famed for her healing powers.55 On the other side of the argument we find the more scientifically-minded Vitruvius, who argues that the different qualities of rivers and springs are caused by the varying nature of the soil; some minerals were poisonous, while others were healthy.56 Pliny, in his Natural History, takes a similar stance;57 he believes also that the temperature of the water is key to its healing properties: lukewarm springs and rivers were especially potent.58 It is crucial to note, however, that neither author actually dismisses the divine nature of these waters,59 or their seemingly supernatural effects, and Pliny acritically relates several stories of apparently miraculous healing connected with springs and rivers, usually associating specific waters with specific ailments.60 The testimony of men like Pliny, a member of the military and political elite, and a personal friend of emperor Vespasian, demonstrates that it would be far too simplistic to argue that the belief in the supernatural curative power of rivers and springs was a purely local affair for those of lower social backgrounds. Up to this point, I have for the most part treated rivers and their springs as interchangeable. In reality, the situation was somewhat more complex. Most springs were of course connected to rivers by virtue of being their source, but in many ways they were religious sites in their own right, more so than any other location along the river's course. In Roman Gaul, cult places related to rivers were most frequently located at the spring, with the crossings and confluences of rivers only a

52 Aelius Aristides, Sacred Tales 5.11-13. Cited in Campbell (2012), p 337-338. 53 Derks (1998), p 141. 54 Aelius Aristides, Sacred Tales 2.17, 2.18, 2.45, 2.51. Cited in Campbell (2012), p 337-338. 55 Varro, On the Latin Language 5.71 (English transl. R.G. Kent 1938). 56 Vitruvius, On Architecture 8.3.1-28. Cited in Campbell (2012), p 338-341. 57 Pliny, Natural History 31.28. 58 Pliny, Natural History 31.2. 59 Pliny, Natural History 31.2 tells us that rivers and springs “augment the number of the divinities”. 60 Pliny, Natural History 31.3-12. 18 distant second and third in popularity.61 The situation in other parts of the Empire appears to have been very similar; as Servius, a fourth- to fifth-century CE grammarian, wrote in a commentary on the Aeneid: “all springs are sacred.”62 In some instances, the worship at these springs was clearly directed towards the river itself, as in the case of the sanctuaries at the source of the Seine and Marne, where inscriptions were found dedicated to the goddesses Sequana and Matrona, respectively.63 In most cases, however, offerings were made more generally to the nymphs of the place, or the fons (spring) itself. In these cases, it might be said that the spring was a religious site in its own right. The worship of or at springs in Rome dates back to the archaic period. The city itself was home to a number of wells and springs, and from the earliest times each was associated with a certain deity; the Camenae, for example, who watched over a spring near the Porta Capena, or goddesses like Carmenta or Juturna (who I have mentioned once already). Over time, it seems a certain generalization took place, while these spring deities for the most part faded into obscurity or transformed into something with a broader applicability. The Camenae soon came to be identified with the Muses, imported from Greece, and lost their uniquely aquatic nature. So did Carmenta, who became a goddess of childbirth, while Juturna became a healing deity and was even granted her own temple.64 At the same time, the fontes deities of specific spring were mostly replaced by the Greek nymphs.65 It is to these nymphs, then, that most offerings at springs were dedicated. The religious practice associated with springs was mostly votive in character: individuals gave offerings to the water to repay the deities for services provided or miracles worked. In some places a spring was marked by a sanctuary or even a temple; remarkably, this was not just the case for the sources of major rivers like the Seine,66 but often for much smaller and seemingly unimportant brooks as well, as was the case at the large complex found at Genainville, France.67 In most cases, however, a spring was not marked by any building, and can only be identified as a cult place due to the often huge amounts of votive objects found in or around the water. Coins were often tossed into the spring as a simple offering, much like people today throw coins into fountains for good luck.68 More elaborate objects were also offered, though: votive altars were set up, and sculptures of the

61 Derks (1998), p 138. 62 Servius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid 7.84. Cited in Campbell (2012), p 128. 63 Sequana: CIL 13 2858, 2861-2865, 11575. See also Aldhouse-Green (1999). Matrona: CIL 13 5674. 64 Coarelli (2007), p 275-280. 65 See Wissowa (1912), p 219-221. 66 Aldhouse-Green (1999). 67 Mitard (1993). 68 Pliny the Younger, Letters 88 (English transl. W. Malmoth 2001). 19 nymphs or other deities were submerged in the spring.69 Lastly, many springs, especially hot springs, became the focus of a somewhat more secular popularity and were visited by thousands for their curative properties. These spas, known to the Romans as simply aquae, could be found all over the Empire, but with a high concentration in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor.70 Springs seem to have been more strongly associated with healing than rivers – the preference of Aelius Aristides for rivers, noted earlier, appears to be somewhat of an anomaly in this regard.71 The presence of a nearby spa could be an immense boost to a town's economy, and in some cases the springs became the heart of a tourist industry; the hot springs at Baiae in Campania, for example, were a highly fashionable destination for the Roman elite in the late Republic at least.72 Clearly, curative springs were a prominent and popular feature of the Roman landscape, as is also indicated by the high number of aquae marked on the Peutinger Map – even in the fourth century CE, they were apparently thought worth mentioning amongst the cities of the world.73 In the following paragraph, we shall turn to the subject of rivers as gods in their own right, but before we do so it is important to note that other, more well-known deities were on occasion associated with rivers as well. In some instances the connection between the god and the water is obvious, as in the case of Asclepius, the god of medicine, whose cult was often linked with springs or rivers for their healing properties. Significantly, the Temple of Asclepius in Rome was built on Tiber Island, where even today a hospital can be found. The connection is rather less obvious for four rings found in the Rhine near Mainz, clearly thrown into the river as a ritual act. The inscriptions on the rings identify them as gifts dedicated to Heracles, Mercury, and Mars.74 Why these gods should receive these gifts through a river is unclear to me, but perhaps this curious fact will serve to illustrate the sacred power possessed by all rivers, independent of its own divinity.

River gods As we have seen, rivers, their sources, and their waters were held by the Romans to be sacred. But for a great number of these rivers, the religious significance went one crucial step further: these rivers were themselves gods, and although they are only bit players in most of the better-known myths and rarely have temples dedicated to them, their worship was very much a genuine part of lived religion all throughout the Empire. In this paragraph I shall sketch out some general

69 Derks (1998), p 138-139. 70 Campbell (2012), p 348-351 provides a map, though it is incomplete. 71 Campbell (2012), p 346. 72 As evidenced by Horace, Letters 1.15 (English transl. C. Smart 2004). 73 Allen (2003). In total, 55 spas are marked on the map, of which almost half are in Italy. 74 See Wegner (1976), p 78. CIL 13, 10024 207, 10024 13a, 10024 13c, 10024 18a. 20 characteristics of these deities and give a brief overview of their appearance and function in mythology and iconography, thereby illustrating some of the subjects and themes with which they were commonly associated. Subsequently, I shall turn to their actual worship and demonstrate how this phenomenon was shared across many layers of society. To start with the basics, both river gods and goddesses are attested, although the ratio between the two genders seems to have varied from region to region. In Greece, for example, virtually all river deities were male, in contrast to the exclusively female nymphs usually associated with springs.75 In Gaul, on the other hand, the distribution of genders was somewhat more even: river goddesses were perhaps more common, although male deities were certainly not unknown, either.76 All river gods could, of course, be called upon to provide safe passage across the water, assure a bountiful harvest on its banks, and usually to cure the ill and ensure good health for everyone. Not all were exactly alike, however; certainly in the mythological and literary spheres the specific characteristics of individual river deities are clearly established. Although rivers might be respected for their size and strength, these attributes were not necessarily directly proportional to the prominence of the river god. The worship of rivers as gods was not a uniquely Roman phenomenon. On the contrary: this worship, in one form or another, seems to have been virtually universal among the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean and western Europe. Greek stories of river gods abound,77 and the Nile had held a divine status in Egypt and abroad for thousands of years. Moreover, archaeological finds indicate that the Celts inhabiting Gaul and Britain, as well as the Germans across the Rhine, worshiped river spirits too, although the details of their religious beliefs are unclear.78 As a consequence, when the Empire spread out across the region, Roman and local religious views on rivers could often be reconciled with very little trouble. It should also be noted in this context that the Romans did not usually rename the rivers of the lands they conquered, opting instead to simply adopt a Latinized version of their (the river's, and its associated deity's) local name. These common cultural threads were not, of course, entirely coincidental. In part, at least, they were causally linked: Roman conceptions of river deities were strongly influenced by foreign cultures, most prominently of course by the Greeks.79 This influence made itself felt as early as the seventh century BCE, in the time of the kings, through the colonies of Magna Graecia in southern

75 Brewster (1997). 76 Sequana (Seine) and Matrona (Marne) were female, see note 64 above. Rhenus (Rhine) was male, though, and shall be discussed in detail in Chapter III, “Pater Rhenus”. 77 For a thorough and often entertaining overview of the river gods of Greece and their associated myths and cults, see Brewster (1997). 78 Campbell (2012), p 139-140. 79 Campbell (2012), p 143-150, Gais (1978). 21 Italy. Before this influence took hold, the Romans had worshipped the numina of rivers, in similar ways perhaps as the Celts and Germans, but did not anthropomorphize them.80 The fundamental manner in which river gods were portrayed in Roman art and literature – and hence in the popular imagination as well – was borrowed almost wholesale from the Greeks.81 Of special importance in this cultural exchange was the Acheloös, foremost among the rivers of Greece. Images of this river god were exported to Etruria in the archaic period, where they proved to be so popular that local manufacturers began to copy them.82 It seems likely that the Romans in turn adopted the imagery of the Greek river gods from the Etruscans.

Fig. 2: Roman statue of a river god holding a cornucopia, Naples. Reproduced from http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/S36.3.html.

So what did Acheloös look like? He, like other Greek river gods, was originally portrayed in sculpture and on coins as a bull with a man's head. From the fifth century BCE onwards, though, their features became gradually more human, turning first into a young man with bull's horns, before shedding the bovine aspect entirely and adopting the form of an older, bearded man starting in the second century BCE. Finally, following the example of statues of the Nile produced in Alexandria, the iconographic type that would become the standard in Roman times developed: that

80 Campbell (2012), p 128-135. 81 Campbell (2012), p 153. 82 Meyers (2009), p 241-243. 22 of the naked or semi-naked bearded man reclining, often resting on an urn from which water flowed, and holding one of various attributes in his hands (see Figure 2).83 A second type that remained popular in the Roman period was apparently developed by the Etruscans: the disembodied head of a bearded, long-haired man, originally with bull's horns, although these too disappeared eventually (see Figure 3).84 These images are often found around springs or fountains, with the mouth of the river god sometimes acting as the fountainhead, thereby giving a literal image to the notion that the appearance of running water was a divine gift.85 The association between river gods and bulls is a very old one,86 and finds its clearest expression in a famous Greek myth, recalled also by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.87 In this tale, Heracles fights the mighty river Acheloös for the hand of his future wife Deianaria. During the struggle, the river god takes on the shifting forms of a man, a serpent (perhaps reflecting the meandering course of the river), and a bull. In this same myth, incidentally, we can find the origins of another iconographical trope, that of the river god holding a cornucopia, symbolizing its life- giving powers; it was supposedly created from Acheloös' horn, broken off during the fight. Though the bovine features of river gods gradually vanished from artistic depictions over the centuries, they were not forgotten. In later Greek and Roman literature, rivers were with some regularity described as “horned”.88 Virgil, for example, refers to the “gilded horns” of Eridanus (the river Po).89 Several centuries later, the Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius in his Mosella still gave horns to the Rhine.90 It is rare, however, for a river god to play a prominent part in Greek or Roman myths. As a survey of the religiously significant rivers of Greece demonstrates, although these deities are mentioned in myth with some frequency, they usually play only a peripheral role. They are often passive observers of the events of the story, or receive little more than a name-drop, often as the father or ancestor of a hero or maiden, lending these mortals an air of divinity.91 Even among the barbarians such claims were made; according to the late Republican poet Propertius, the Belgic chieftain Virdomarus “boasted he was born of the Rhine itself”.92 This tendency is also given an odd twist in the Aeneid, where the human Turnus, foe of Aeneas, is brother, rather than son, to the water goddess Juturna.93 When river deities do take action, it is virtually always in the romantic sphere;

83 Gais (1978). 84 Meyers (2009), p 241. 85 Vollkommer (1994), p 35. 86 See also, for example, Homer, Iliad 21.237 (English transl. A.T. Murray 1924). 87 Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.62 (English transl. B. More 1922). 88 Vollkommer (1994), p 4 deals with the specific case of the Rhine. 89 Virgil, Georgics 4.371 (English transl. J.B. Greenough, 1900). 90 Ausonius, Mosella 436-437 (English transl. D. Parsons 2003). See also Chapter III, “Pater Rhenus”, below. 91 Brewster (1997) provides countless examples. 92 Propertius, Elegies 4.10 (English transl. A.S. Kline 2002). 93 Virgil, Aeneid 12.59. 23 they chase water-nymphs or the beautiful girls who visit their banks, often against their will. Of the Greek rivers, the Acheloös and Alpheios especially were known as notorious womanizers and appear to have fathered dozens of children.94

Fig. 3: Limestone river god mask, Cologne. Reproduced from Vollkommer (1994), p 34.

Their appearance in myth and iconography serves to mark out a number of subjects, domains, and themes with which river gods were commonly associated.95 The most prominent of these is without a doubt that of life and health. River gods were life-giving forces, as their waters brought fertility to their banks, their representations in art carried the cornucopia, and their mythical personifications impregnated women and fathered heroes and kings. Healing and health are related themes, as is ritual purification. The opposite side of the coin, death, as well as rebirth, was ascribed to river gods as well, as the topos of the dying hero being reborn as a god through the intervention of the river, briefly discussed in the previous paragraph, demonstrates. In addition, the power of prophecy was frequently ascribed to river gods; secret knowledge of both past and future was also part of their domain.96 Sadly, this subject falls beyond the bounds of my interest in this thesis. Because of their relative obscurity – few temples were built for them – one might expect that

94 Brewster (1997), p 9-14, 80-87. 95 See Taylor (2009) for an essay on many of these themes, their appearance in myth, and their interrelation. 96 Taylor (2009), p 30-31. 24 river gods were primarily mythological figures or decorative elements in iconography, but this was certainly not the case. The worship of river gods was very much a part of lived religion. It was certainly so in Homer's time; the Iliad contains several casual references to sacrifices to river gods. In his tale, the Trojans were said to regularly sacrifice bulls to the river Scamander, close to their city, as well as “casting single-hooved horses while they yet lived into [the river’s] eddies”. The same river god also had a priest.97 The Greeks evidently had similar customs. At one point, Nestor, wisest among the Greeks, tells the tale of a battle in Greece in his youth. Before the fighting, sacrifices were made to Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, and Alpheius, the god of the “sacred stream” near which his army had been camped.98 In a third passage, Achilles speaks of the promise his father had made to the river Spercheus, if the god ensured Achilles’ safe return: to sacrifice fifty rams on his altar, and that Achilles would offer him a lock of his hair.99 The river god apparently failed to keep his side of the bargain, and Achilles did not return. Of course, Homer, who lived somewhere around the eight century BCE, was ancient history by the time of the Roman Empire. The evidence provided by Pausanias, who travelled extensively during the second century CE and wrote a Description of Greece, which has a lot to say on the subject of rivers, demonstrates that the worship of river gods was still very much alive at this time. Indeed, the custom of cutting off one’s hair as an offering to a river, as in the tale of Achilles, was still practiced in places.100 In the city of Psophis, situated on the river Erymanthus, there was even a full-fledged temple to the river god, which contained, according to Pausanias’ brief description, an “image”, a cult statue, of the god. He goes on to explain that “the images of all rivers except the Nile in Egypt are made of white marble, but the images of the Nile […] they are accustomed to make of black stone”, implying that many other such white marble statues existed across Greece.101 When the Romans came to Greece, they respected these local river rites and even shared in them; Sulla, the Roman dictator who campaigned in Greece in the early first century BCE, halted his march for a moment to give sacrifice to the river Cephisus.102 This is not to be wondered at, as the rivers in Italy, the Roman heartland, were apparently worshipped in much the same ways, although our sources are often scarce. A popular Italian river cult centred around the Clitumnus river in Umbria, which is known to us primarily from a letter of the younger Pliny, dating to the start of the second century CE.103 In this letter, Pliny heartily recommends a visit to this river, which

97 Homer, Iliad 21.130-133, 2.523. 98 Homer, Iliad 11.725-729. 99 Homer, Iliad 23.144-150. 100 Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.41.3 (English transl. W.H.S. Jones & H.A. Ormerod 1918). 101 Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.24.12. 102 Plutarch, Sulla 17.3 (English transl. B. Perrin, 1916). 103 Pliny the Younger, Letters 88. 25 boasted not only a sacred spring but also “an ancient and venerable temple, in which is placed the river-god Clitumnus”. Pliny clearly believed in the god’s power, adding that “the prophetic oracles here delivered sufficiently testify the immediate presence of that divinity”. Nor was he alone: there were “numberless inscriptions upon the pillars and walls […] celebrating the virtues of the fountain, and the divinity that presides over it”.104 Of course, not all river gods were equal. Some were certainly worshipped more prominently than others. We have already seen that the Acheloös was considered the greatest river in Greece, and the Nile also was renowned the world over.105 As might be expected, the rivers nearest to Rome, the Tiber foremost among them, took centre stage in the Roman world. Certainly in the earlier periods of their history, before the Empire had expanded too far beyond their banks, local river gods played an important role in Roman religion, although Cicero records that even in his time, the first century BCE, “the augurs’ litany includes as we may see the names of Tiberinus [god of the Tiber], Spino, Almo, Nodinus, and other rivers in the neighbourhood of Rome”.106 A festival was also held for the Tiber and the fishermen who made their living off the river in June, with games taking place on the Campus Martius.107 According to Georg Wissowa, the great historian of Roman religion, the cult of Tiberinus actually grew out of an earlier worship of Volturnus, a god of rivers and water in general, who had its own priestly college and another festival, the Volturnalia.108 At some point, this deity came to be associated with two specific rivers: the Volturno in Campania, which adopted its name, and the Tiber, for which Volturnus took on the epithet “Tiberinus”. This god of the Tiber had yet another religious festival in its honour, taking place on the 8th of December, the date of the founding of a sanctuary to “Father Tiberinus” on the Tiber Island.109 In addition to this worship of the river itself, a number of rituals were connected to the Pons Sublicius, a bridge over the Tiber; these I will discuss in the next paragraph. Finally, an incident taking place during the reign of Tiberus in the first century CE and reported by Tacitus demonstrates that the divine status of rivers was more than just a story to the Romans, and that the religious reverence of rivers could even influence political decision-making. Tacitus tells us that a discussion arose in the senate over a plan to prevent the Tiber from flooding

104 For more on Italian river cults, see Wissowa (1912), p 224-225. For an extensive analysis of the evidence for the Rhine, another major river, see Chapter III, “Pater Rhenus”, below. 105 Hesiod, Theogony 340 even names it first among the many river god children of Oceanus and Tethys. 106 Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.52 (English transl. H. Rackham 1933). 107 Ovid, Fasti 6.235-240. 108 Wissowa (1912), p 224-225. The same theory is repeated by Wegner (1976), p 102. 109 For more on the title of “Father”, see Chapter III, “Pater Rhenus”, below. 26 (which happened regularly) by damming some of its tributaries, thereby weakening its current.110 In response to this plan, deputations from towns located on these rivers came to Rome to protest the plan. Their reasons were partly pragmatic, as their livelihoods depended on the water, but they had reservations about the religious implications of the plan as well; “the faith of their fathers”, which included “hallowed rituals and groves and altars to their country streams” should be respected. It was also deemed improper that the mighty Tiber should “flow with diminished majesty”. Although Tacitus dismisses such concerns as “superstition”, the plan was subsequently scrapped. It certainly seems that the worship of river gods was primarily a local affair, and this is not surprising. Divine as they were, rivers were bound to their particular environment and could not be expected to hold much sway in other parts of the world. We should certainly not assume, however, that it was a matter only for the lower classes and beneath the notice of the elite. Some members of the elite, like Tacitus, were clearly sceptical of the divinity of rivers, but others, like Pliny or Aelius Aristides, embraced it, and we have seen that Tiberinus/Volturnus was part of the pantheon of the official state religion. Votive inscriptions dedicated to river gods, nymphs, or springs, were set up by men and women from every layer of society, from slaves to senators.111 The worship of rivers as gods permeated the Roman world, and it is crucial to remember this religious background when discussing the role of these rivers in any other context as well.

River crossings and religious boundaries It shall by now be abundantly clear that when most Romans looked at a river, they saw more than we do. To Roman eyes, rivers were far more than mere geography; they were sacred, infused with divine power to bring life and death, even to tell the future, and they were deities in their own right. So what did it mean to cross an entity of such power, taking a boat over the stream or building a bridge? The fact that such a crossing involved interacting with a god is acknowledged and illustrated nicely by a scene on the Column of Trajan, erected after the emperor's conquest of Dacia and telling the tale of that campaign. Near the start of the frieze spiralling upwards along the column, we see the river god of the Danube in human form, rising out from his waters and looking on with apparent approval as the Roman armies cross over his stream (see Figure 4).112 In this paragraph, I shall elaborate on the ritual and religious significance of these river crossings. Once again starting in the realm of myth, perhaps the most dramatic examples of the ritual aspect of crossing a river are provided by the legendary rivers of the underworld, Styx and

110 Tacitus, Annals 1.79. Cited in Campbell (2012), p 130. 111 Campbell (2012), p 133-134. 112 Lepper & Frere (1988), scene III-IV. 27 Acheron.113 These terrible waters, of course, formed the ultimate boundary in the Greco-Roman cosmology: the one between the realms of the living and the dead, and to cross them was in that sense clearly a deeply meaningful act. Moreover, this crossing could not be affected without the proper rituals. The tale of Charon the ferryman, who demands payment in the form of a single coin, an obol, before allowing the dead to cross, is well-known. Proper burial of the body was another ritual necessity; in Virgil’s Aeneid, the shade of Palinurus, the helmsman of the Trojan fleet who drowned before reaching Italy, is left to wander the banks of the river of the dead until his body has been found and buried.114 In myths such as these we find the ultimate expression of the religious significance of crossing a river, and of the difficulty of doing so without the proper ritual preparation.

Fig. 4: The crossing of the Danube on the Column of Trajan. Reproduced from Lepper & Frere (1988), plates VI-VII.

Of course, these are just stories in the end, and though myths can definitely tell us something about the beliefs of the people who told and shared them, they are no substitute for the real thing. There is certainly evidence to suggest, however, that these exact same patterns were followed in actual religious observance. The great historian Herodotus tells us that during the Greco-Persian War of 480-479 BCE the Persians under Xerxes “sought good omens” before crossing the river

113 Brewster (1997), p 15-19, 69-71. 114 Virgil, Aeneid 6.384-436. 28 Strymon by sacrificing a number of white horses.115 The Greeks knew this custom, too: some years earlier, around 494 BCE, Cleomenes, King of Sparta, had marched on Argos and reached the river Erasinus. The king offered sacrifices to the river, but in return he was given omens “in no way favourable to his crossing”. He therefore chose to find another way around, and was even a good enough sport to honour the hostile river “for not betraying its countrymen”.116 Even earlier, the archaic Greek poet Hesiod in his moralizing poem Works and Days had advised his brother never to cross a river without praying and washing his hands in the stream. If he did not, the gods would be “angry with him and bring trouble upon him afterwards”.117 Once again, there seems to have been little difference between Greeks and Romans in this regard. The Romans themselves similarly sought omens and offered sacrifices before crossing a river. According to Cassius Dio, writing in the third century CE, Crassus crossed over the Euphrates in 54 BCE to go to war with the Parthians in spite of unfavourable omens, and went to his death.118 As we have seen, some decades earlier Sulla, also leading an army into battle, made sacrifices to the river Cephisus before crossing it.119 Another interesting example is the Petronia, a tiny stream running through the southern part of the Campus Martius in Rome before joining the Tiber.120 Though crossing it would not have been a difficult task, this small brook apparently carried great religious significance as one of the boundaries of the city, even into the Imperial era. According to the obscure second-century CE grammarian Festus, if a magistrate wished to cross it to conduct business on the Campus Martius, he had to take the auspices first.121 Elsewhere in his (fragmentary) text, in fact, he states that this ritual was required for the official crossing of any river whatsoever.122 It may very well be that this rule was not always followed to the letter, but its appearance in this text does express a fundamental belief in the divinity of rivers and the danger and ambiguity associated with crossing them. The building of bridges across a river seems in many ways to have been a similarly religious act, and a number of traditions dating from the earliest period of Roman history remind us of this fact. In fact, the first bridge ever built over the Tiber in the seventh century BCE, the Pons Sublicius, was associated with a number of rituals; according to Plutarch, the bridge was originally maintained by the priesthood, and “sacrifices of the greatest antiquity and the most sacred

115 Herodotus, Histories 7.113 (English transl. A.D. Godley 1920). 116 Herodotus, Histories 6.76. 117 Hesiod, Works and Days 739-740 (English transl. H.G. Evelyn-White 1914). 118 Cassius Dio 40.18. 119 Plutarch, Sulla 17.3-4. 120 Campbell (2012), p 16. 121 Festus, On the Meaning of Words L 295.24: Petronia amnis est in Tiberim perfluens, quam magistratus auspicato transeunt, cum in campo quid agere volunt. Cited in Holland (1961), p 18-20. 122 Festus, On the Meaning of Words L 146.17. Cited in Holland (1961), p 18-20. 29 character” were made there.123 The annual ceremony of the Argei briefly mentioned earlier in this chapter involved the ritual deposition of effigies into the Tiber from the Pons Sublicius; in his description of this ancient rite, Dionysius explicitly refers to a “sacred bridge”.124 According to a theory by Louise Adams Holland, the archaic Roman god Janus, traditionally associated with boundaries and thresholds, was originally a god of bridges, sacred spaces that formed a passage across the river boundary between Rome and the outside world.125 The bridge was clearly an important part of early Roman religion; it has even been speculated that the Latin word pontifex, meaning a priest of any god, was originally derived from pons and facere, literally meaning “bridge builder”. Yet more than through the written rules and prescriptions of the official state cult, it is through the use of archaeological sources that we can catch a glimpse of the lived religion of the ordinary people living under Roman rule. Archaeology has revealed to us a curious and very revealing custom: the intentional submersion of ritual offerings and gifts, like tools or jewellery, into rivers and streams.126 Likewise, in military areas like the Rhine frontier, it appears to have been a common practice among the legionaries to offer swords, lances and helmets to the river.127 It is often difficult to establish with certainty why certain objects are found in a certain location. But the sheer amount of these finds, as well as the fact that these were often highly elaborate, decorative objects, unfit for actual use in war or trade, leads to the conclusion that their submersion in the river was an intentional act. As no literary source references this custom, it is difficult to determine its exact meaning, but a religious motive seems highly likely; perhaps these were votive offerings to the river god from those too poor to afford more traditional gifts. An even more modest yet very common type of offering to the river were coins. These have been found in the Tiber in numbers too great to be solely the result of accidental dropping.128 On the Rhine, too, large amounts of Roman coins have been unearthed from the river’s bed and bank, and crucially these finds – along with the tools and weapons – were highly concentrated around the sites of established river crossings, bridges, or ferries.129 From this fact the generally accepted explanation for this strange phenomenon may be deduced. The coins at least were submerged as part of a very simple ritual: to toss a coin into the river before crossing it, to appease – or bribe – the

123 Plutarch, Numa 9.2-3 (English transl. B. Perrin, 1914). See also Campbell (2012), p 21. 124 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.38. See page 16, above. 125 Holland (1961). 126 Torbrügge (1970), Wegner (1976). 127 Roymans (1993). 128 Campbell (2012), p 142. 129 Wegner (1976), p 26-27. 30 river god and ensure a safe passage to the other side.130 The parallel with the Styx and its boatman Charon is striking. Understood in this way, these small offerings demonstrate that the rivers of the living world were considered to be religious boundaries, imbued with a divine power that made crossing them a potentially dangerous undertaking. To cross a river was, to Roman eyes, to commune with a god. Omens were heard, sacrifices were made, prayers were uttered, and rituals were enacted, all to protect the traveller from the river and its wrath – clearly, these gods were something to be respected and even feared. The building of bridges, permanently chaining the river, was an occasion to be commemorated. The rivers’ divinity made them into more than the simple waterways they may appear to be to us; it made them into something alive, powerful, and dangerous. To cross such an entity, on foot, by boat, or even by bridge, involved much more than simply conquering its physical current. Evidently, one way of overcoming these religiously charged boundaries and ensuring a safe crossing was to appease the river god, buying it off with sacrifices and rituals, or at the very least a bit of money.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to convey as succinctly yet broadly as possible the religious meaning of rivers in Roman culture. We have seen that to a Roman – and a Greek, and a German – rivers were sacred things, and their names referred not only to the stream itself but also to the god or goddess residing within it. Their waters were 'alive' in an almost literal sense, springing forth from the earth as if by a miracle. They possessed the supernatural power to bring life, to purify things which had been corrupted, to heal the sick, and even to foretell the future. They were strongly associated with the divine, and owing to the Greek influence soon came to be seen as deities themselves, expressed in art and mythology as bovine and, later, anthropomorphic fertility figures. These river gods were worshipped by the people living on their banks, and their existence was acknowledged by all but the most ardent sceptic. These powerful entities were inherently ambiguous and dangerous, as they could bring both ruin and prosperity. To travel across a river, then, was a risky business. From ancient times, people had made sacrifices and sought omens before building a bridge or attempting to row across the stream, all to ensure that the river would look kindly upon the traveller and give his blessing to the journey. Even those of humble means would offer a coin or two to the god to ‘buy’ safe passage to the other side. In other words, crossing a river was a big deal, and for good reason. Rivers were not simply lines on a map or even just sources of water. Rather, to cross them was to cross a god, and to cross them

130 See also Derks (1998), p 140. 31 without permission or the proper rituals was to make a god very cross indeed. As evidenced by the existence of these rituals, the divinity of rivers made them into religious boundaries. To return to the main thrust of this thesis, then, in this sense at least the Romans thought of rivers as natural boundaries, and it might seem quite reasonable for them to choose a river for a border. In the next chapter, I will turn to matters more down to Earth, yet related to what has been discussed here, dealing with the role of the river as a military and political boundary.

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33 II. Rivers as military and political boundaries Introduction We have seen that in the religious sphere at least, rivers were imbued with great meaning in the eyes of the Romans. As a rule, all rivers great or small were gods, and on some level this made them into religious boundaries. In this chapter I shall take this argument forward by assessing Roman beliefs in the value of rivers as boundaries in the military and political spheres – two categories, obviously, which are to a certain extent intertwined – which have been the subject of much discussion. Where the first chapter was a slight deviation from the traditional scope of the debate on river boundaries, adding to it a new but crucial dimension, I will now return to more well-trodden paths. The notions presented in the previous chapter, concerning the divinity of rivers and the rituals involved with crossing them, should however be kept in mind. As I intend to demonstrate, the Roman perspective on rivers as military and political boundaries is entirely in line with their religious views on rivers, and the two were perhaps more intertwined than we might think. I must reiterate that I am no strategist, and that this thesis is not an attempt to prove by reason that rivers provide a sound defensive barrier for military use, and are therefore unequivocally natural boundaries. Those who have come before me have made reasonable arguments both for and against this statement, and using reason alone, I cannot decide between them. Moreover, as I argued in the Introduction, to analyse the strategic choices made by the Romans through the lens of modern rationalism is a fundamental error; even Rankov fell into this trap, and his argument in favour of the defensive value of rivers is essentially anachronistic.131 For my part, I am concerned solely with the Roman perspective, shaped by their own particular culture, on rivers and their merits as boundaries. All that I aim to prove, then, is that – whatever we may think of it – the Romans themselves did in fact believe rivers 'made sense' as boundaries, political and military. This chapter is again subdivided into three paragraphs. In the first, I tackle the main subject of this chapter head on, dealing with the military uses of rivers, both logistical and defensive, as perceived by Roman authors. The crucial second paragraph rounds off the primary argument of this thesis, and is focused on the tendency in Roman texts to place the political (and military) borders of the Empire along the course of the so-called great rivers of Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates, and why we should take this seriously. Finally, in the third paragraph, I will take things in a slightly different direction by resolving a paradox, arguing that while the Romans clearly thought rivers to be 'natural' and even 'rational' boundaries, these boundaries were not insurmountable, and that they did not truly consider any boundary to be a limitation to the power of the Empire.

131 See page 6, above. 34 The military uses of rivers Rivers provide many valuable services to the communities living along their banks: they can be a source of drinking water, fish, and agricultural fertility. The previous chapter has shown that they can even be an inspiration for religious sentiments. As will have become clear, however, the military value of rivers is a rather more contentious issue. In the debate concerning the frontiers of the Roman Empire, many scholars have claimed that rivers are useless defensively – crossing rivers is easy, they say, and manning their entire course leaves one's forces spread dangerously thin – but are very useful as lines of transport and communication instead.132 Of course, these two functions do not necessarily preclude or contradict one another. But the crucial question is this: what military uses did the Romans themselves attribute to rivers in general? To answer this question, I have turned first and foremost to the Gallic War of Julius Caesar – who better to inform us of military matters than one of the most accomplished Roman generals? Although most Roman authors, as members of the political elite, had some measure of military experience, few of their works are as direct a testimony of a military campaign as the Gallic War. The text was written during the war itself, between 58 and 50 BCE, by its commander in the field. As such, it is an immensely valuable source of information on Roman military insights and strategy, and the greater part of this chapter will be focused on Caesar's writings. Although other authors rarely go into quite as much detail on military matters as Caesar, on the subject of rivers their views seem largely consistent with his; therefore they will serve here as an occasional supplement to the evidence of Caesar. Let us first see what can be said about the logistic use of rivers. It is striking that Caesar rarely mentions this fundamental aspect of warfare at all, and fails to inform the reader how his provisions were maintained and transported. Moreover, the handful of passages in which he does make reference to the use of rivers as lines of transportation are often somewhat ambiguous. The most direct evidence for it can be found in the first book, as Caesar describes his pursuit of the Helvetii, a people living in the Alps who attempted to cross the river Rhone, which was held to be the border of the Roman province, without permission.133 He is forced to ask his Gaulish allies for corn to feed his armies, because “he was unable to use the corn which he had conveyed in ships up the river Saône”. Here, then, we have a clear statement of the fact that the Roman army made logistic use of rivers. Incidentally, this passage also illustrates the pitfalls of a riverine system of transport; Caesar was unable to make use of the shipped corn as “the Helvetii, from whom he was

132 Most prominently, Whittaker (1994), although he admits in Whittaker (2004), p 6-7, n 37, to “underestimating” the value of rivers as a defensive barrier. See also Cornell (1993). Rankov (2005) argues in favour of the defensive worth of rivers. 133 For more on the Rhone as a political boundary, see below. 35 unwilling to retire, had diverted their march from the Saône.”134 Other passages are somewhat less clear-cut. Towards the end of the Gallic War, for example, Caesar reports that two of his lieutenants have been sent into winter-quarters, again near the Saône: “He stations Quintus Tullius Cicero, and Publius Sulpicius among the Aedui at Cabillo and Matisco on the Saône, to procure supplies of corn.”135 In this passage it is not precisely stated that the river and the transport of corn are related – another possibility is that Caesar mentions the river simply to explain where Cabillo and Matisco are to be found – but it certainly seems likely. Caesar is more ambiguous still when he describes the location of a camp built along the river Aisne during a campaign among the Belgae. He writes: “This position fortified one side of his camp by the banks of the river, rendered the country which lay in his rear secure from the enemy, and furthermore insured that provisions might without danger be brought to him by the Remi and the rest of the states.”136 Again, a river and the supply of provisions are mentioned together, but are not explicitly connected. To my knowledge, these three passages are the only references made to the logistic use of rivers in the Gallic War. There is also a single mention of warships in a riverine environment, when Caesar orders them built on the river Loire in preparation for his invasion of Britain.137 However, Caesar's silence should not in my view be taken to mean that these were unusual occurrences. Quite to the contrary, the fact that he refers to the shipment of military provisions over rivers only when he has a specific narrative reason to do so – to explain his appeal to the Gauls for corn, the division of his armies during the winter, or his choice of campsite – may well demonstrate that he saw the act itself as entirely self-apparent and unworthy of note except under exceptional circumstances. The same pattern can be observed in the works of Tacitus, who, although not a military man like Caesar, covers several wars and campaigns in the Annals and Histories. He, too, writes little of the shipment of supplies by river,138 except in describing an incident in the rebellion of Civilis in 69 CE. Civilis, making what is described as a “naval demonstration”, a display of his naval power, at the confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine, attempts to intercept by force a Roman fleet carrying supplies up the river from Gaul.139 Despite possessing superior numbers, the ploy fails and the Roman supplies pass through unharmed. Although it should be noted that in contrast to the Gallic

134 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.16 (English transl. W.A. McDevitte & W.S. Bohn 1869). 135 Caesar, The Gallic War 7.90. 136 Caesar, The Gallic War 2.5. 137 Caesar, The Gallic War 3.9. 138 According to Poignault (2001), who systematically analyses Tacitus' writing on rivers and reports only two instances. 139 Civilem cupido incessit navalem aciem ostentandi. Tacitus, Histories 5.23; see also 4.35. 36 War, Tacitus makes several references to fleets and the transport of armies across rivers,140 the general picture is quite similar. Both authors – one a general, the other just a politician – clearly understood the great value of rivers as lines of transportation, and furthermore apparently deemed this a matter so obvious as to require little explanation. We have seen that the Roman sources appear to agree with the consensus view insofar as they recognize the logistic value of rivers. But what of their defensive use, so often denied? Here Roman views seem to deviate from the modern. In the Gallic War, rivers appear at the site of battles and skirmishes at a strikingly high frequency. This fact alone hints that Caesar – and his enemies – reckoned them to be of tactical value, but moreover, in several passages he is quite explicit in attributing a defensive advantage to holding the banks of a river. For example, he mentions no less than four towns encircled by a river: Vesontio, capital of the Sequani;141 Noviodunum, held by the Aedui;142 Alesia, capital of the Mandubii;143 and Avaricum, a settlement of the Bituriges.144 In all four cases he reckons this feature of the landscape made the town easily defensible. Of Avaricum he says that “they could easily defend it, owing to the nature of the ground, for, being enclosed almost on every side by a river and a marsh, it had only one entrance, and that very narrow.”145 Not only cities enclosed by a river were easily defensible, however. In one of the passages already cited we have seen that Caesar believes that making camp along a river “fortified one side of his camp” and “rendered the country which lay in his rear secure from the enemy.”146 On several other occasions the general notes, without further elaboration apparently being deemed necessary, that a camp was constructed along a riverbank.147 Of course, the use of the river as a supply route will have been a factor here too, but the previous passage clearly suggests something more. Furthermore, he twice has channels dug and filled with water, as if to simulate a river, in order to defend a position from attackers, and he is successful both times.148 Again, Caesar appears to have considered it an entirely obvious fact that the banks of a river were an advantageous defensive position to take. Nor was this a uniquely Roman military insight; Caesar's adversaries appear to have applied the same tactics, as when it is discovered that “all the Nervii had stationed themselves on the other side of that river, and together with the Atrebates and the Veromandui, their neighbours, were there

140 Tacitus, Annals 2.8; Histories 3.52, 4.24, 4.26. 141 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.38. 142 Caesar, The Gallic War 7.55. 143 Caesar, The Gallic War 7.69. 144 Caesar, The Gallic War 7.15. 145 Caesar, The Gallic War 7.15. 146 See note 136, above. 147 Caesar, The Gallic War 2.10, 2.16, 2.27, 4.4, 5.18, 7.55, 7.65. 148 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.8, 7.72. 37 awaiting the arrival of the Romans”.149 On one occasion both Romans and Germans even tried to hold the same river, leading to a brief standoff: “There was between Labienus [one of Caesar's lieutenants] and the enemy a river difficult to cross, and with steep banks: this neither did he himself design to cross, nor did he suppose the enemy would cross it.”150 In this scenario, both sides were hoping to use the river for its defensive advantage by waiting for the other side to attempt a dangerous crossing. Right or no, it would seem that crossing the river was not considered to be quite as easy as modern authors like Whittaker make it out to be. Even if a crossing was feasible, at a bridge or ford, these chokepoints were used as sites of ambush, and Caesar describes striking at his enemies in such a manner in several passages. In the case of Labienus’ standoff, the situation is resolved when the Romans pretend to withdraw, purposefully baiting their foes into attempting to ford the river, before attacking them when they are vulnerable in the water..151 At another time, when their camp on the river Aisne is attacked by the Belgae from across the river, the Romans “attacking in the river the disordered enemy, slew a great part of them. By the immense number of their missiles they drove back the rest [of the Belgae], who, in a most courageous manner were attempting to pass over [their fallen comrades’] bodies, and surrounded with their cavalry, and cut to pieces those who had first crossed the river.”152 In other words, as the Belgae were wading through the river, slowly and vulnerably, Roman archers fired upon them and killed the majority of them. The remaining foes who managed to reach the Roman bank were promptly slain by the cavalry. Under Caesar's command, then, the Romans were acutely aware of the defensive value of rivers and actively sought to make use of them. Other sources again seem to support and share this belief. Tacitus has the Britons in his Agricola compare themselves favourably to the Germans: “Germany did thus actually shake off the yoke, and yet its defence was a river, not the ocean.”153 Although not as formidable as the Ocean, these Britons too considered a river to be a potent “defence”, and Tacitus does not contradict them. Boris Rankov cites an honorary inscription set up at Tivoli late in the first century CE, acclaiming a military commander once stationed on the Danube for bringing “kings hitherto unknown or hostile to the Roman people to the bank of the river which he was guarding to worship the Roman standards”.154 Likewise, he refers to a story related by Cassius Dio of Hadrian cutting down a bridge across the Danube, despite the formation

149 Caesar, The Gallic War 2.16. 150 Caesar, The Gallic War 6.7. 151 Caesar, The Gallic War 6.8. 152 Caesar, The Gallic War 2.9. 153 Tacitus, Agricola 15 (English transl. A.J. Church & W.J. Brodribb 1876). 154 Ignotos ante aut infensos p(opulo) R(omano) reges signa / Romana adoraturos in ripam quam tuebatur / perduxit. CIL 14, 3608, cited in Rankov (2005), p 177, emphasis mine. See also the following paragraph. 38 of the province of Dacia on the other side, as he feared that if the guards were overcome it would give the enemy an easy way into Moesia.155 Evidently, Hadrian believed that a river without a bridge would be a more effective defence. All these texts are quite explicit and consistent, then, in attributing a defensive function to rivers. Of course, we cannot take the testimony of our sources entirely at face value. It must be kept in mind that Caesar, for instance, had in some respects clear political and propagandistic reasons for representing the facts as he did. Presenting rivers as definite boundaries gives him a valid pretext for waging war against those who cross them, and telling us that rivers are extremely difficult to cross makes Caesar himself appear all the more heroic in eventually conquering them.156 Some caution is therefore to be recommended, but this should not lead us to disregard his claims entirely. Caesar was a highly capable military leader, and his political ambitions would certainly not lead him to make strategic or tactical decisions he deemed unsound. The decisions he did make demonstrate a clear belief, consistent with other sources, not only in the logistic value of rivers, but their defensive value as well.

Political boundaries and the borders of the Empire As I have noted earlier, it is a striking fact that those who argue against the idea that the Romans saw rivers as ‘natural’ boundaries, do not cite any Roman texts directly supporting their view.157 Quite to the contrary, they are forced to discount a large body of sources explicitly associating rivers with boundaries – most prominently with the military and political boundaries of the Empire itself. David Braund nicely captures this deficiency in a response to C.M. Wells’ admission that “the identity of culture on both banks of the Rhine”, which he championed, asserting that the Rhine was not a boundary at all, “may conflict with Caesar’s evidence”. Braund responds: “But it is not simply that modern perception of cultural identity on both banks of the Rhine may conflict with the evidence of Caesar. It does conflict, nor can that conflict be so easily brushed aside. […] Moreover, Caesar is not alone in presenting the Rhine (and other rivers) as a significant divider”.158 Although I am not concerned here with “identity of culture” per se, this quote adequately illustrates the problem with the consensus view of rivers as boundaries in the Roman world: Roman sources contradict it time and again. As it happens, many Roman texts clearly and casually mark rivers as boundaries. In fact, this trend can be observed on a global scale in the writings of Roman geographers, describing the

155 Cassius Dio, 68.13. 156 A point I will return to below, in the third paragraph of this chapter. 157 See page 9, above. 158 Braund (1996), p 44, citing Wells (1972), p 24. Emphasis in original. 39 world, its continents, and their shape. These authors make use of rivers as a point of reference and as a indicator of distance, measuring lands shores by the distance between river mouths,159 but also have a strong tendency to associate them with continental boundaries. Pomponius Mela, the only Roman geographer (aside from Pliny, who uses Mela as a source160) to survive in Latin, and whose work dates from the middle of the first century CE, separates the three known continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa by the Mediterranean Sea, the river Don (called Tanaïs), and the Nile.161 The well- known Greek geographer Strabo, who wrote only a few decades earlier, does the same, as does Pliny not long after.162 Meanwhile, Seneca points, strangely, to the Danube as dividing Europe from Asia.163 The association of both the Nile and the Danube as continental boundaries is strange, as this would result in a highly distorted view of the continents. Still, the fact that geographers chose the Nile, rather than the narrow strip of land at Suez between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, to define the division between Asia and Africa, perhaps demonstrates just how strong their tendency to have boundaries be linked to rivers really was. Of course, geographic boundaries on the scale of continents were a mostly academic matter, and probably of little interest to most inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Political boundaries, the main subject of this paragraph, were of a rather more practical value. The authors representing the current consensus view on river boundaries in the Roman world, C.R. Whittaker most prominent among them, have argued that the association of these boundaries with rivers was a matter of convenience, due only to the simple reason that they are easily recognisable features of the landscape, and that in fact rivers were not political boundaries at all.164 In what follows, I shall argue against this view, both by showing the strong and consistent tendency in the Roman sources to make this association, and by explaining why we should not dismiss these sources out of hand, as has been done in the past. Within the context of the Roman Empire, we can distinguish two main types of political boundary (or border): those between different provinces, and the borders of the Empire itself. Regarding the first category, I shall be brief, as few ancient texts go into much detail on political boundaries on this level. However, Pliny the Elder, who should certainly be expected to be well- informed on matters of politics, demonstrates a strong interest in rivers in his Natural History, and he describes several of the Empire’s provinces as bounded by rivers on one or more sides. The border between Gallia Narbonensis and Italy itself, for example, is to be found along the river

159 Campbell (2012), p 53-62. 160 Campbell (2012), p 50. 161 Pomponius Mela, 1.7-8 (English transl. F.E. Romer 1998). 162 Strabo, 2.4.7 (English transl. H.L. Jones 1917-1932). Pliny, Natural History 3.0. 163 Seneca, Questions of Nature 6.7.1 (English transl. J. Clarke 1910). 164 See the Introduction, above. 40 Varus.165 Likewise, the borders between Pannonia and Moesia,166 Lusitania and Baetica,167, and Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior are explicitly river-bound.168 Caesar, who famously starts his history of the Gallic Wars with a geographic description of Gaul, its three parts separated by the rivers Garonne, Marne, and Seine,169 refers to the river Rhone as “separating our Province from the Helvetii”.170 Not all the provinces’ borders were rivers, but it would seem that it was certainly not uncommon.

Fig. 5: The fortresses of the limes on the Lower Rhine. Reproduced from Austin & Rankov (1995), p 248.

While inter-provincial boundaries certainly had administrative importance and political repercussions, the imperial borders, separating Roman civilization from the as yet unconquered or

165 Pliny, Natural History 3.5. 166 Pliny, Natural History 3.29. 167 Pliny, Natural History 3.2. 168 Pliny, Natural History 4.31. His description of the borders of some other provinces is too vague to be entirely sure, but seem to imply a riverine border as well. 169 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.1. Pliny, Natural History 4.31 refers to the same boundaries. 170 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.2. 41 unadministrated barbarians beyond, were obviously more significant dividers, and are my main concern here. Of course, archaeology has a great deal to tell us about these frontiers. It is an undisputed fact that the intricate network of legionary forts, encampments, and naval bases, connected by the limes-road, which was first constructed in the time of Augustus, was centred, at least in the north, on the rivers Rhine and Danube (see Figures 5 and 6).171 The fact that the vast majority of these forts and camps were located on the Roman side of the rivers is hard to reconcile with the idea that they were merely protecting a shipping lane, and certainly seems to suggest a harder, more defensive function as a boundary. However, as the continued debate concerning these frontiers has shown, the precise function of this line of fortifications can be interpreted in different ways and the archaeological evidence alone is not enough to resolve this problem.

Fig. 6: The fortresses of the limes on the Danube. Reproduced from Austin & Rankov (1995), p 250.

Once again, it is therefore vital to look to the textual testimony of the Romans themselves, to understand their perspective. Luckily, the borders of the Empire itself often appear in our sources, as many Roman authors describe them with pride. These texts overwhelmingly and categorically

171 Luttwak (1976) and Campbell (2012) both provide excellent overviews. See Graafstal (2002) for some interesting suggestions on the structure of the limes in the spaces between the forts along the Dutch Rhine. 42 state that the political boundaries defining the limits of the Empire were for the most part located along what have come to be known as the ‘great rivers’: Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates. Earlier, I referenced Tacitus' description of the Empire as so vast that it is “enclosed by the Ocean or distant rivers”.172 On another occasion, he refers to rivers as “the ancient defences of our empire”, combining the political with the military.173 Nor is Tacitus alone in this conviction. For example, Flavius Josephus, historian of the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 CE, is more specific as he asks, rhetorically: “what wonder is it that Euphrates on the east, the ocean on the west, the most fertile regions of Libya on the south, and the Danube and the Rhine on the north, are the limits of this empire?”174 Strabo agrees, at least with regards to the northern borders: “Of the continents, which number three, [the Romans] hold almost all of Europe except for the part lying beyond the Danube and the parts along the ocean between the Rhine and the Don.”175 The Greek historian Appian, living in the second century CE, likewise writes that “in Europe two rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, almost entirely bound the Roman empire”, presumably making an exception for the recently-conquered Dacia across the Danube.176 Seneca, too, describes these two rivers as “separating with their streams the peaceful from the hostile, [the Danube] checking attacks from the Sarmatians [...] and [the Rhine] keeping back the Germans", incidentally attributing them with a military and defensive function as well.177 All these passages, and many others like them, clearly express the notion that these rivers were significant political boundaries; on their southern side the Empire lay, peaceful and civilized, while the lands beyond were untamed, populated by hostile barbarians.178 Even if there is an element of literary convention to it, passages like this would not be reiterated so often and so decisively if there were no truth to them at all. Even as late as the fourth century CE, during the reign of Constantius II, these borders were held to be the essential divider between Rome and the barbarians, though by then they were under constant pressure.179 According to the consensus view, as has been discussed, the great rivers were not really boundaries at all, militarily or politically.180 Instead, it holds that the Empire had no real linear borders, and that these rivers were merely a part of a broader frontier zone. In this view, any

172 Tacitus, Annals 1.9. 173 Tacitus, Histories 4.26. 174 Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 3.5.7 (English transl. William Whiston 1737). 175 Strabo, 17.3.24. 176 Appian, Roman History 1.4 (English transl. H. White). 177 Seneca, Questions of Nature 6.7.1. 178 Although the work is highly dated, there is still some truth and relevance to the vision of Alföldi (1952). 179 Zosimus, New History 3 (English transl. Green & Chaplin 1814). For more on the Rhine, see Chapter III below. 180 See the Introduction, above. 43 statements to the contrary made by the Roman sources are due only to convenience.181 Yet how can we brush aside this body of this evidence, which consistently states or implies the rivers to be strong dividing lines and borders, so lightly? Are we to actually believe that all these men – most of them with military or political experience – either failed to understand the nature of the borders of their own Empire, or chose to wilfully misrepresent them for convenience or simplicity’s sake – despite the fact that many of them rarely hesitate to elaborate on other, seemingly far more trivial matters, and that in so doing, they would be portraying the Empire as less expansive and impressive than it actually was? I think not. If we argue against the great rivers as clear ‘lines on a map’, we argue against the Romans themselves, as our sources clearly demonstrate, and this discrepancy is not adequately addressed in the consensus view. Not only is it arrogant to simply ignore this evidence, it is a fundamental anachronism to apply our own modern rationalistic understanding of landscape to the Roman world. Even if we do not perceive rivers to be rational or effective boundaries in either the military or political sphere, that does not mean the Romans understood matters in the same way. In fact, as I have demonstrated in the preceding chapters and paragraphs of this thesis, the Roman perception of rivers in multiple cultural spheres was remarkably consistent. Their religious views on rivers are especially important to keep in mind;182 the divinity of rivers and the ritual significance of crossing them alone serves to explain the faith Romans held in the river as a dividing line. But the fact that they ascribed a defensive value to these waters, and tended to regard them as political borders, is not simply a direct product of these religious views; instead, we should understand these three cultural spheres and categories, as the Romans did, to be intertwined. From the perspective of this broader and specifically Roman cultural understanding, rivers were entirely natural boundaries.

Imperium sine fine And yet this is not the whole story. Rivers were natural boundaries to Roman eyes, yes, but they were not unassailable. Earlier, I have briefly discussed the mythical rivers of the underworld, Styx and Acheron, and they will serve to illustrate my point here.183 These rivers formed the ultimate boundary, that between life and death, and their waters were deadly, icy cold and covered in noxious fumes. Still, they could be crossed. They were crossed, repeatedly, by legendary figures like Hercules or Aeneas, and this symbolic triumph over death was a crucial part of their journey. To conquer these rivers and the power they represented was a spectacular feat that served to

181 See the Introduction, above. 182 As argued by Braund (1996). 183 See page 27-28, above. 44 demonstrate their greatness, their worth as a hero. And so it was with the river boundaries in the world of the living, too. As we have seen, rivers frequently functioned as political boundaries in the Roman Empire, to separate its provinces from each other and from the barbaric lands beyond the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates. Nevertheless, history shows that such boundaries were not an obstacle to the Roman advance. Throughout the period of the great conquests of the Republic, in the second and first centuries BCE, many such riverine boundaries had of course already been crossed; think of Caesar, who tells us that the Rhone at this time formed the border of “our Province”, but spends the entirety of the Gallic Wars operating far beyond its banks.184 In the Res Gestae, his adopted son, the emperor Augustus, similarly boasts of having “pushed forward the frontier of [the province] Illyricum as far as the bank of the river Danube”, but immediately goes on to claim that “my own army was led across the Danube and compelled the tribes of the Dacians to submit to the orders of the Roman people”.185 Nor did the established borders along the great rivers from the first century CE onwards stop the Romans from asserting their authority further inland, both diplomatically and militarily. Edward Luttwak’s claim that the Roman ‘grand strategy’ was centred on establishing easily defensible ‘scientific frontiers’ specifically along the line of the great rivers is thrown into doubt not only by the conquest of Dacia and Mesopotamia early in the second century CE, but by a whole host of other, less successful campaigns beyond the rivers as well.186 Excursions across the Rhine and Danube remained common for several centuries after the establishment of the river frontier, and the Parthian Empire across the Euphrates was a common target for emperors trying to boost their military reputation. Indeed, epigraphic finds indicate a Roman military presence well into modern Azerbaijan, well east of the Euphrates’ course.187 Moreover, the Roman authorities clearly believed they held some sway over the barbarians beyond the rivers, even if their lands were not incorporated into official provinces.188 This willingness to cross the established riverine borders is reflected in the ideological claim that the Romans ruled the entire world, which paradoxically coexisted with the tendency to associate rivers with boundaries. The Res Gestae open with the claim that Augustus “placed the whole world under the sovereignty of the Roman people”, before listing all the conquered lands and

184 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.2. 185 Augustus, The Deeds of the Divine Augustus 30 (English transl. F.W. Shipley 1924). 186 Although Mesopotamia was soon abandoned by Hadrian. Luttwak (1976), p 55 argues that Hadrian was genuinely defensively minded, and this analysis still seems accurate. 187 Whittaker (1994), p 56. 188 The subject of diplomacy lies largely beyond the scope of this thesis. The analysis of the Roman use of client states as a ‘buffer’ offered by Luttwak (1976) – despite the failings of this work in other areas – still seems valuable. 45 peoples specifically.189 Around the same time, Virgil famously has Jove himself promise imperium sine fine, “empire without end”, to the descendants of Aeneas.190 Although this claim was perhaps made most frequently in Augustan times, and should in part be understood within the context of Augustus’ political revolution, it actually predated him and continued to be made by Roman authors long afterwards.191 Apparently, the notion of having already achieved world domination was not considered contradictory with continued wars and conquests. How, then, are we to reconcile the unceasing attempts to enlarge the Empire across the great rivers with the facts laid out in the previous chapters and paragraphs? We have seen that rivers were gods, and their streams were sacred boundaries, the crossing of which was fraught with danger. If the deity was placated with the proper rituals and sacrifices, he might bear the traveller safely to the other side, but nothing was guaranteed. At the same time – and, I think, partly in consequence – the Romans considered rivers to be genuinely useful military barriers, easy to defend from assault, but difficult to overcome without casualties. So why, in the face of all these dangers and uncertainties, did the Romans continue to cross them? The resolution to this paradox, to my mind, is connected to just this aspect of danger. If it was truly to conquer the entire world, the Empire would have to bend nature to its will and make it work for the benefit of Rome. If a river could not be appeased through ritual or sacrifice and did not acquiesce to its imperial overlords of its own accord, like the Danube did by supporting the Roman conquest of Dacia, as pictured on the Column of Trajan (see Figure 4),192 it would have to be fought. And it was precisely because rivers were so dangerous that to conquer them was such a glorious achievement, and a mark of the greatness of both the individual general and the Roman people as a whole.193 In essence, by crossing these natural boundaries, defeating them, the Romans proclaimed themselves the equals of heroes like Heracles and Aeneas. Perhaps the clearest expression of this theme, the conquest of rivers, can be found in a curious habit involving the procession through the streets of Rome held as part of a triumph (the specific celebratory rite known as a triumph, that is, not just any victory), in which symbols and attributes of the peoples conquered by the victorious general were carried along, demonstrating their subjection to Rome.194 In some cases, anthropomorphic representations of rivers or their deities

189 Augustus, The Deeds of the Divine Augustus 1. 190 Virgil, Aeneid 1.327. See also Ovid, Tristia 4.2.1-2 (English transl. A.S. Kline 2003). 191 Nicolet (1991), p 29-47. Polybius, cited there and writing in the second century BCE, claimed that the Romans had subjugated almost the entire world (1.1.5). 192 Lepper & Frere (1988), scene III-IV. See Chapter I, above. 193 For more on the subject of Roman views on the conquest of nature, see Kleiner (1991), Nicolet (1991), Beagon (1992, 1996), and Purcell (1996).There is also a strong connection with the themes explored in Taylor (2009), discussed briefly in Chapter I. 194 See Beard (2007). 46 were included in these processions. Florus records a number of triumphs of Caesar; in the first, for his wars in Gaul, representations of the former border river Rhone and the Rhine, which he had crossed, were included, along with the Ocean itself. In the second triumph, celebrating his victory in Egypt, the Nile was represented in the procession. The Nile was of course not a border, but lay at the heart of Egypt, and should probably be understood here as a symbol for the conquered country as a whole.195 Similar imagery can be seen on the Arch of Septimius Severus, celebrating that emperor’s wars against Parthia in 194-199 CE. Among its decorative elements are included images of the defeated Euphrates river, which was crossed at the start of these campaigns.196 The remains of a triumphal arch found at Mainz-Kastel on the far side of the Rhine convey the same sentiments in a different way; although we do not know what inscription or decoration this arch once bore, its very location on the northern bank is obviously intended to send a clear message: that the Romans would not be held back by even this great river.197 Not every expression of this ideology was quite as grand and megalomaniacal as this, however. A more modest variation on the theme is expressed on a third-century CE milestone found in Spain, recording the repair of a vulnerable road along a river. Although this river was not a political or military boundary, the writer of this inscription clearly took a similar prime in subjugating this difficult river: it had, so the inscription reads, been “thoroughly tamed”.198 A very specific point of pride for the Romans was their skill in bridge-building. Although they were aware that bridges were a breach in the defensive barrier of the river, and appear to have been hesitant in building permanent ones,199 several sources also portray the building of a bridge as a glorious victory over nature. The late Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, in an account of the Persian campaign of the emperor Julian, records that Trajan, some centuries earlier, had vowed specifically to bridge the Danube and Euphrates. Both Julian and Marcellinus apparently regarded this as a “great enterprise”.200 Statius goes even further in a poem celebrating the building of a bridge over the Volturnus river in Italy – which had not been a political or military boundary in centuries – in which the river god himself rises up and acclaims the emperor Domitian as “supreme lord and conqueror of my bank” and “more powerful than Nature”.201 Moreover, it appears to have been fairly common to include triumphal imagery and themes in the decorative architecture on

195 Florus 4.2.88 (English transl. E.S. Forster 1929). For more on these processions, many of which included the Rhine, see Chapter III below. 196 Campbell (2012), p 378. 197 Frenz (1989a, 1989b). 198 CIL 2, 4911, cited in Purcell (1996), p 199. 199 Rankov (2005). 200 Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History 24.3.9. 201 Statius, Silvae 4.3 (English transl. A.S. Kline 2012). 47 bridges.202 These are all expressions of a powerful imperialistic ideology that made nature itself subservient to Rome and its Empire. The Romans had great respect for rivers as natural, religious, military, and even political boundaries, but they respected nothing more than themselves. This is not a contradiction; the power of rivers as boundaries only served to make them more attractive as objects of conquest and submission.203 In an important article on Roman bridges, Fred Kleiner concluded that “Roman victories could be won not only against men but against Nature herself”.204 As illustrated by a letter by Pliny the Younger, in which he recommends Trajan’s Dacian campaign as a suitable subject for writing a poem to his friend Caninius, not so much due to the conquest of the Dacian people – only their king is mentioned – but more because of the greatness of discovering new lands and bridging their rivers, a victory over nature might even be the most glorious of all.205

Conclusion Roman sources are explicit and consistent in attributing military value to rivers as a defensive barrier, in addition to their use as lines of communication. Rivers were difficult, if not impossible to cross in war except at vulnerable fords or bridges, which could act as defensive bottlenecks or sites of ambush. To Roman eyes, therefore, rivers were entirely logical military boundaries and frontiers. Moreover, it is apparent from both the literary sources and the physical reality of the fortresses along the great rivers of Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates, that these rivers were definitely considered on some level to be the political boundaries of the Roman Empire as well. Certainly, provincial administration ended there, with the exceptions of Dacia and short-lived Mesopotamia. This is entirely consistent with the facts presented in the first chapter of this thesis, in which I argued that rivers, as living gods, were highly charged religious boundaries as well. As I argued earlier, the interpretation of landscape is culturally determined,206 and it is short-sighted to apply modern categorizations to ancient conceptions of it. As such, even though Caesar and other military men do not refer to the religious aspect of rivers in their records of war, it seems highly likely to me that the religious and military or political spheres could not and should not be entirely separated in the Roman view of the world. It is with our understanding of the religious context in mind that we can understand that rivers were boundaries far more meaningful and ‘rational’ to the Romans than they might seem to us.

202 Kleiner (1991). See also Campbell (2012), p 377. 203 There is some overlap here with the themes of intimidation, submission, and terror in Roman foreign policy explored in Mattern (1999). 204 See note 202, above. 205 Pliny the Younger, Letters 8.4. 206 See the Introduction, “Landscape and culture”, above. 48 And yet no boundary, border, or frontier, however stable or ‘rational’, was ever considered the definitive limit of the Empire’s power. All boundaries were held to be temporary, and applicable more to their enemies than to the Romans themselves. C.R. Whittaker wrote that “countries that are expanding have little interest in the limits of their power”, and for once, I agree with him.207 The Romans never really gave up on the notion of world conquest, and even as they held the Rhine and Danube as a defensive barrier and provincial border, they regularly crossed it to wage war on the other side. In fact, they considered the crossing itself to be a victory – doubly so if it involved building a bridge as a permanent sign of conquest – over the river, its associated deity, and nature as a whole. Such a glorious victory could even be a goal unto itself for emperors and generals hoping to ensure their legacy. Precisely because rivers were natural boundaries, they were also a challenge to Roman power, and one they could not ignore.

207 Whittaker (1994), p 31. 49 III. The Rhine Introduction Over the course of the previous chapters, I have presented a new view – or rather, an ancient one – on rivers as boundaries in the Roman world, arguing for a stronger focus on the literary sources and cultural context, which, taken together, demonstrate that rivers, regardless of modern rationalist strategic thinking claiming otherwise, were highly ‘rational’ boundaries in Roman eyes, albeit not impassable ones. In this final chapter I will not add any new insights to this view, but rather take it down to a more empirical level, testing the value of my approach as set out in the previous chapters, and working it out in more detail, by applying it to a specific case study: the river Rhine. We have established that to Roman eyes, rivers were natural boundaries. But was the Rhine an actual boundary? This sharper focus allows me to test my argument and offer a more structured exposition of the evidence, while simultaneously engaging more directly with a number of key issues in the debate surrounding river frontiers in the Roman Empire. The Rhine (Latin Rhenus, derived from the Celtic word Renos, meaning simply “river”208), which flows for approximately 1200 kilometres in a north-north-westerly direction from the Alps to the Low Countries, discharging into the North Sea, was brought to the attention of the Romans by the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar in 58-50 BCE, and soon became one of the most important rivers in the Roman world. The Romans were impressed by its power; it was described as having a “rapid current” by Caesar,209 and as we have seen, it grew to be one of the great rivers bounding the Empire.210 My reasons for choosing the Rhine as a case study are twofold. The first is a pragmatic one: the Rhine was a major river, and as such references to it in the Roman sources, as a river and as a boundary, are plentiful. More importantly, however, as one of the great rivers of the Empire, it plays a crucial role in the debate, and dealing with it in more detail allows me to engage more directly with this debate. The structure of this chapter is a rough reflection of my argument as presented in the previous chapters. Each section contains a careful examination of the evidence provided by our sources, in greater detail than the broader scope of the previous chapters allowed. In the first paragraph I shall explore the evidence for the worship of the Rhine as a deity and its consequent role as a religious boundary. The following paragraph is concerned with the Rhine as a military and political boundary, first between Gaul and Germany, and later between the Roman Empire and the barbarians. Finally, the third paragraph deals with the crossing of the Rhine boundary by the

208 Pauly-Wissowa – “Rhenus”, p 734. 209 Caesar, The Gallic War 4.10. 210 See below, “The Rhine as frontier”. 50 Romans, and the ideological implications of such an act.

Pater Rhenus In the first chapter of this thesis I explored the religious meaning given to rivers in Roman culture, as a way to contextualize their role as boundaries in the Roman world. Rivers, as it turns out, were sacred things imbued with great power and personified as deities. We may suppose that the same applied to the Rhine, which was after all one of the most important rivers of the Roman Empire. However, our evidence for Roman religious interaction with the Rhine is fairly limited, albeit still more expansive than for most rivers. Although Tacitus, in his history of the Batavian revolt of 69 CE, reports that the rebel leader Civilis called upon the Rhine, along with the “Gods of Germany”, to aid in his war against the Romans,211 showing that this religious sentiment was certainly held by the Germans, there is, to the best of my knowledge, no direct literary evidence for the active worship of the Rhine by the Romans.212 Luckily, this dearth is relieved by the epigraphic and archaeological material, which is rather more abundant. Aside from less specific dedications to the nameless nymphs or the generic genius loci, the spirit of the place, a number of votive objects, seemingly fragments of altars, have been found in the Rhine area bearing inscriptions invoking the river god himself.213 For example, a fragmentary inscription found near Schaffhausen, Switzerland, at the upper course of the Rhine (whether it was inside the river or beside it is unclear), is dedicated to the flumen Rhenus, praying for the well-being of a Quintus Spicius Cerialis, the governor of the province of Raetia.214 This ties in very well with the common association of rivers and their gods with health and healing, discussed in Chapter I; in this case, the river’s medicine is preventive, rather than curative. This inscription is somewhat unusual for being dedicated solely to the river god; many others include the Rhine among a list of other deities. A votive inscription dating from the time of Commodus, late in the second century CE, and found at Remagen (Rigomagus, a military fort along the German Rhine) invokes Jupiter, the anonymous genius, and the Rhine, in that order.215 Another, set up by the legate of the XXXth legion at Fectio (a fort marking the spot where the river Vecht branches off from the Rhine) “for his own health and that of his [dependents]”, similarly hedges its bets, being dedicated to Jupiter, the ancestral spirits, the gods of the place and the Ocean, and the

211 Tacitus, Histories 5.17. 212 Vollkommer (1994), p 2, n 7 refers to a number of texts, none of which turn out on closer inspection to be unambiguous evidence of an active worship of the Rhine. 213 For a somewhat different interpretation of these sources, see Derks (1998), p 140-141. 214 [F]lum(ini) Rheno / pro salute / Q(uinti) Spici Ceria[lis] / [. CIL 13, 5255 = AE 1993, 1227. 215 I(ovi) O(ptimo) M(aximo) et / genio lo/ci et Rhe/no Cl(audius) Mar/cellinus b(ene)(iciarius) / co(n)s(ularis) v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito) / Imp(eratore) Commodo / VI co(n)s(ule). CIL 13, 7790. See also CIL 13, 7791. 51 Rhine.216 Although the river is only one among several deities invoked in these texts, they do demonstrate that the Rhine was held to be just as sacred as any other river in the Roman world. There is more to be said about the worship of the Rhine than these simple dedications tell, however. Probably the single most important piece of evidence we have for the worship of the Rhine is provided by a sacrificial altar uncovered in several pieces in Strasbourg in 1968 (see Figure 7).217 Strasbourg, located on the left bank of the Rhine, was known to the Romans as Argentoratum, in the province of Germania Superior and established as the base of the VIIIth legion in the time of Augustus. It was home to a port or naval base servicing ships sailing the Rhine, and remained a military outpost for several centuries, even after the limes advanced beyond this section of the Rhine, leaving Argentoratum behind the frontier.218 The stone altar, which is approximately 90 centimetres high, 60 centimetres wide, and 40 centimetres deep, is decorated with common images of sacrificial implements like a knife and a bowl.219

Fig. 7: Sacrificial altar to “Father Rhine”. Reproduced from Vollkommer (1994), p 5.

216 I(ovi) O(ptimo) M(aximo) / dis Patriis et / Praesidibus huius / loci Oceanique / et R(h)eno / Q(uintus) Marc(us) Gallia/nus leg(atus) leg(ionis) XXX U(lpiae) V(ictricis) / pro salute sua / et suorum / v(otum) s(olvit) m(erito). CIL 13, 8810. Note that it while Oceani is connected to dis, Rheno is a god addressed in its own right. 217 Trendel (1972). The reconstructed altar is currently located in the Musée archéologique in Strasbourg. 218 See below, “The Rhine as frontier”. 219 Trendel (1972), p 17. 52 What is more interesting than these common decorative elements, however, is the inscription on its front face, though it is short. It reads: RHENO PATRI OPPIVS SEVERVS LEG AVG, meaning “Oppius Severus, legatus Augusti, [made this] for Father Rhine”.220 This unique object proves that a religious cult for the river god of the Rhine was still alive and well into the second century CE at least, when the altar is thought, based on what is known about Oppius Severus, to have been erected. Indeed, it stands to reason that it would be so; the soldiers and local inhabitants were dependent on the river and probably crossed or sailed upon the stream regularly, and were therefore vulnerable to its dangers. Sacrifices on an altar like this served to appease the river god and protect the people from his whims. The use of the word “father” to describe the Rhine is especially striking, and not unprecedented, as other sources apply the term to a number of great rivers. Most prominently, the Tiber in Rome is occasionally referred to as Tiberinus pater, and the Po (Padus) is given this epithet as well.221 The association between river gods and paternity is not to be wondered at, taking into account their common role in mythology as the father of heroes or the progenitor of whole peoples, and the great antiquity ascribed to these deities.222 The fact that, by the use of this honorary title, the Rhine is placed in the same category as these prominent and, notably, Italian rivers, is remarkable, however. It demonstrates both the importance of this river to Argentoratum and the Empire as a whole, and the great power it was thought to wield. Equally crucial for our understanding of rivers in Roman culture and religion is the fact that the altar was set up by this Oppius Severus. Legatus Augusti is a somewhat ambiguously worded title, but is in this case usually taken to refer to the legate commanding the VIIIth legion stationed at Argentoratum.223 This was not the private religious expression of a sailor or merchant, but a public display of piety by a high functionary. Moreover, the post of legionary legate was assigned only to those of senatorial standing – indeed, Oppius Severus, who lived around the middle of the second century CE, came from a prominent senatorial family in Rome,224 and both his grandfather and great-grandfather had been consuls.225 He was not a local soldier, brought up on the banks of the river, but a wealthy and educated man from the imperial centre. The fact that such a man would erect an altar and offer sacrifices to “Father Rhine” thoroughly disproves the notion that the worship of river gods was a purely local superstition far from the minds of the Roman elite.

220 See also AE 1969/1970, 434; 2010, +1067. 221 Wissowa (1912), p 224-225, Vollkommer (1994), p 2-3, Campbell (2012), p 136. 222 See Chapter I, above. 223 Campbell (2012), p 136, n 120. The post is more traditionally referred to as legatus legionis, and should not be confused with the legatus Augusti pro praetore in charge of the province. The same office (in a different legion) is held by the dedicant of CIL 13, 8810 – see note 218 above. 224 Trendel (1972), p 18. 225 PIR2, O 124, which also includes a family tree. 53 The archaeological sources supplement our understanding of Roman worship of the Rhine even further. One intriguing phenomenon that goes unmentioned by the textual sources is the intentional submersion of weapons and armour in the river, as an offering to the river god or some other deity. The great number of Roman swords and helmets which have been found in the Rhine cannot be explained through accidental loss and riverside battles alone; many of them are richly decorated, and many of the swords are undamaged and still in their sheaths. It seems, then, that these objects should be understood as ritual sacrifices.226 This practice, which was at its peak in the first and early second centuries CE, was a continuation of a previous Celtic tradition, which was apparently adopted by Roman soldiers.227 Earlier, I have already mentioned the related practice of throwing coins into the river when crossing it.228 This, too, is well-attested in the Rhine area. Large collections of coins have been found in the Rhine and its tributaries, in numbers too great to be accidental, and heavily concentrated on the locations of bridges or other crossing points, more so than the prehistorical finds of a similar nature found in the same area.229 While the precise motive, beyond appeasing the river generally, for the submersion of weapons and other objects such as jewellery is hard to establish230 – we may speculate that they were offerings to celebrate a victory, to ask for protection, or to ensure good health – it seems highly likely that these coins, the simplest of gifts, were gifted to the river and its god to ensure – or buy – safe passage across the water. Despite the silence of the Roman literary authors on the subject, it is clear that the worship of rivers in general and the Rhine in particular was very much a part of lived religion. The powerful Rhine appears to have already been an important factor in the religious practice of the Celts and Germans, and when the Romans moved in, they continued their worship of “Father Rhine” both by adopting existing local rites (the offering of weapons) and introducing new ones (the dedication of sacrificial altars). Moreover, the practice of ‘sacrificing’ a coin before crossing the river demonstrates that the sacred nature of the Rhine made it into a religiously charged boundary as well. Lastly, it should be noted that virtually all evidence for the worship of the Rhine comes from a military context. This is not surprising, of course, considering the prominent role of the Roman army in the area, and the number of legionary forts along the river. It does, however, demonstrate that the military and religious spheres were by no means separate in the Roman system. The generals and soldiers who fought on the river frontier were the same people who worshipped the

226 Roymans (1993), p 47. 227 See also Torbrügge (1970) and Wegner (1976). 228 See Chapter I, above. 229 Wegner (1976), p 26, Derks (1998), p 140. 230 Jewellery: Wegner (1976), p 72-78. 54 river and made sacrifices to it, and as we shall see, that is a crucial point to realize.

The Rhine as frontier As one of the ‘great rivers’, the Rhine lies at the heart of the debate on the frontiers of the Roman Empire. As such, the question whether it functioned as a military and political boundary is a highly charged one, and any possible answer has repercussions for several other, related issues.231 In the second chapter of this thesis, I have argued that, despite the current historiographical consensus holding otherwise, the Romans did in fact have a clear tendency to associate rivers in general and the ‘great rivers’ specifically with political borders and defensive military barriers. In this paragraph, I shall examine the evidence for the Rhine in particular, to see whether it conforms to this pattern, and if the Rhine was actually seen as the functional border and military frontier of the Empire. Before we move on to the established frontiers of Imperial times, however, it will be worthwhile to explore the place of the Rhine in the writings of Julius Caesar, who definitively brought the river into the Roman sphere of influence in the middle of the first century BCE. One of the most striking things about the Gallic War is the key role played by the Rhine as a boundary in Caesar’s account of the war. At the very start of the text, he describes the river as dividing Gaul from Germany, and the relatively civilized Gauls from the more warlike Germans.232 It should be noted that modern archaeology largely disagrees with this assessment, having found a strong continuity of material culture and evidence for regular contact across the river.233 Strangely enough, Caesar even appears to admit this fact – reluctantly, perhaps – asserting that “the greater part of the Belgae [who were a part of Gaul] were sprung from the Germans, and that having crossed the Rhine at an early period, they had settled there […] and had driven out the Gauls who inhabited those regions”.234 In spite of this apparent contradiction, however, Caesar evidently attached a great deal of importance to the Rhine as the political (and cultural) boundary between Gauls and Germans. In fact, it becomes a casus belli on multiple occasions, as Caesar repeatedly campaigns against Germans who have crossed the Rhine – recently or in the past – presenting this act as essentially a crime in itself: he “should at all events suffer none of them anymore to cross the Rhine”,235 as they “would not be likely to restrain themselves, after they had possessed themselves of all Gaul, from going forth into the province and thence marching into

231 These issues will be explored briefly in the general conclusion, below. 232 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.1-2. 233 Whittaker (1994), p 74-78, See also note 116, above. 234 Caesar, The Gallic War 2.4. Emphasis mine. 235 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.43. 55 Italy”.236 For Caesar, then, the Rhine was a powerful dividing line between the peoples of Gaul and Germany, and even an advanced line of defence of sorts for the Roman state, protecting the provinces from the savage Germans even before the final conquest of Gaul. Of course, he had a clear personal interest in presenting the Rhine in this manner: it justified his wars against the barbarians who crossed it – wars which were actually motivated in large part by a desire for personal glory, influence, and wealth. Nevertheless, this image of the Rhine as a boundary between the two peoples was apparently a credible one to later Roman authors, who repeat Caesar’s assertions, despite the fact that none of them, obviously, shared Caesar’s personal political agenda. The second-century BCE geographer Ptolemy confirms that “the western side of Germania is bounded by the river Rhine”,237 as does Cassius Dio in the third century CE, even going so far as to state: “this river has always down to the present time been considered the boundary, ever since these tribes gained their different names”.238 Soon after Caesar’s pacification of Gaul, the country was divided into provinces by his successor Augustus, with northern Gallia Belgica and eastern Gallia Lugdunensis reaching up to the Rhine. Augustus fortified the Rhine with over five hundred forts.239 Nevertheless, he made repeated attempts throughout his reign to conquer ‘Germania Magna’ beyond the Rhine. He enjoyed significant success until the so-called ‘Varian disaster’ of 9 CE, in which three entire legions were lost to a German ambush in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.240 As a result of this devastating loss, the permanent occupation of the lands beyond the river was abandoned, and although recurrent Roman military activity beyond the Rhine continued well into the future,241 Germania Magna was never made into an actual province. Later in the first century CE the lands on the western banks of the Rhine were reorganized into the provinces of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior, so named thanks to the Germans who had crossed the Rhine earlier and settled there, and these remained the furthest point of official, organized Roman dominion.242 In an administrative sense, then, the Rhine was clearly a boundary for the Empire, but this can be explained with equal ease by ‘convenience’ as by the Roman perception of rivers as natural boundaries. More important for the question at hand is the military use of the river. In the campaigns of Augustus in Germany, the Rhine had already been fortified and served as a staging

236 Caesar, The Gallic War 1.33. See also 1.5, 1.28, 1.31, 1.35, 1.37, 4.1, 4.16, 5.2 (for Gauls, conversely, “tampering with” the Germans across the Rhine), 5.41, 5.55, 6.35, 6.42. 237 Ptolemy, Geography 2.11 (English transl. L. Francis 1994). 238 Cassius Dio, Roman History 39.49. 239 At least, this is claimed by Florus, Epitome of Roman History 2.30. 240 Luttwak (1976), p 8. 241 For more on the military campaigns beyond the Rhine, see “Crossing the Rhine”, below. 242 As explained by Cassius Dio, Roman History 53.12. 56 area for the legions. But did it also serve a defensive purpose, and go on to form a military frontier for the Empire as the fortifications took on a more permanent character?243 That this was indeed the case is suggested already by the very form of the limes frontier; although army outposts and fortifications to the east of the Rhine were not unknown, the vast majority of the legionary forts linked by the limes road were located on the western bank, on the Roman side of the river. On the Lower Rhine, the fortifications never extended beyond the river.244 As Rankov points out, this simple fact is irreconcilable with a view of the river as a merely conventional line on the ground with a purely logistical function – the river was evidently thought to confer a defensive advantage as well.245 Roman textual sources support this assessment. Suetonius refers to freedmen soldiers “defending the banks of the Rhine” already in the time of Augustus, although it is unclear whether this took place before or after the abandonment of Germania Magna.246 In the previous chapter I already mentioned a passage in the work of Seneca, later in the first century CE, exalting the Rhine for “separating the peaceful from the hostile” and “keeping back the Germans”.247 Here, the river functions as a political boundary by dividing the pacified lands of provincial administration and the dangerous barbarian tribes of Germany, but Seneca’s choice of words also seems to imply that the river aided military efforts in keeping these barbarians at bay. A very telling piece of evidence is provided by Tacitus.248 Recalling an unusual drought that had weakened the Rhine’s current in 69 CE, the historian reports not only that “reprovisionment was hampered” because boats were no longer able to navigate the river, thereby clearly establishing its logistical function, but also that guards were posted “all along the bank of the Rhine, to keep the Germans from fording it”. From the fact that this measure was only taken in reaction to the failing of the current we must conclude that in normal circumstances, the river itself, explicitly referred to as one of “the ancient defences of our empire”, was considered to be an effective barrier. The same passage even provides some evidence for the religious nature of the Rhine boundary; although the sceptical Tacitus dismisses it as “ignorant”, some of the soldiers stationed on the bank considered the drought an ill omen, a sign that the river and the gods had turned against them, betraying the Empire and siding with its enemies. Two other passages from Tacitus reinforce this image. Describing earlier discontent among

243 By the time of Claudius the legionary camps were transitioning from wooden to stone buildings. Whittaker (1994), p 45. 244 Whittaker (1994), p 77. 245 Rankov (2005), p 178. 246 Suetonius, Augustus 25 (English transl. J.C. Rolfe 1913-1914). 247 Seneca, Questions of Nature 6.7.1. See note 158, above. 248 Tacitus, Histories 4.26. 57 the armies on the Rhine following the death of Augustus in 14 CE, he explicitly tells us that “invasion was certain if the Rhine bank was abandoned”, making the river frontier manned by the legions into a line of defence or even deterrence.249 Not long after this incident, with German forces on the move beyond the river, soldiers stationed on the western bank nearly demolished a bridge across the river at Xanten (Vetera), an act which would have stranded a Roman force on the other side, only to be stopped at the last moment by the commander’s wife.250 Evidently, the soldiers believed that without a permanent bridge, the river would have provided some measure of protection from the approaching enemy. Even in the late Empire of the fourth century CE, Ambrose of Milan – a military governor before becoming a bishop – still unambiguously referred to the Rhine, along with the Danube, as “a notable barricade for the Roman empire against savage nations” in his Hexaemeron, a theological treatise.251 As the Empire lost power, however, the river could even be used as a defence against Rome. Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that around the same time, during a campaign by then- Caesar, later Augustus Julian in the year 359 CE, the hostile tribe of the Allemanni who inhabited the eastern bank, fearful for their safety attempted to turn the Rhine barrier against the Romans. They assembled an army, posted guards along the river, and prevented Julian from constructing a bridge without incurring heavy losses.252 The plan failed – a group of soldiers stealthily crossed the river by night and distracted the enemy long enough for Julian to build his bridge – but does serve to demonstrate the continued belief by both Romans and Germans in the defensive value of the river. It is also rather telling that no permanent bridge was apparently available in the area at this time, again suggesting a strategic choice to maximize this defensive value.253 There is, in short, a great amount of evidence in our sources clearly supporting the existence of a real border line on the Rhine, and demonstrating the conviction among the Romans – and even their enemies – that this powerful river possessed great value as a line of defence, and that this was in fact one of its most important functions within the imperial system.254 This is by no means contradictory with the river’s other function, embraced above all else by the current orthodoxy,255 as a line of communication and transport, a subject on which I have not touched in this paragraph, but

249 Tacitus, Annals 1.36. 250 Tacitus, Annals 1.69. Cited in Rankov (2005), p 178. 251 Ambrose, Hexaemeron 2.3.12 (English transl. http://www.scribd.com/doc/63012914/Hexaemeron-of-Saint- Ambrose-of-Milan). 252 Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History 18.2.8. 253 As per the analysis of Rankov (2005). 254 In addition to the sources cited here, see also the evidence for the political boundary formed by the great rivers presented in Chapter II, with which they are entirely consistent. 255 See for instance Whittaker (1994), p 158: “The Romans treated the line of the Rhine and Danube less as a frontier behind which to set up their defences then as a line of communication and supply along which it was important to keep control by fortifications.” 58 for which there is plenty of evidence as well. The claim that the Rhine was not a political and military boundary at all and had no defensive purpose, however, simply cannot be sustained. The Romans themselves certainly understood the Rhine to be a significant border to their Empire, and a crucial tool in keeping a Germanic invasion at bay.

Crossing the Rhine In the final paragraph of the previous chapter, I argued that the Romans did in fact often cross the rivers they acclaimed as natural boundaries, and obviously did not understand them to be definitive limits to their own power and influence. In fact, alongside the tradition of river boundaries, there existed another common ideological trope claiming Roman dominion over the entire world.256 These two strands of thought need not be contradictory, however, and I have argued that the crossing of the river, precisely because of their nature as a natural boundary in both the religious and military spheres, was considered a victory of sorts over nature. This dual nature of rivers ensured that they could be simultaneously a tool of defence and demarcation in the hands of the Romans, and a force waiting to be conquered by them in their inexorable march towards world conquest. Does this argument hold water for the Rhine frontier? We have already seen that the Rhine was thought from the start to be an unyielding and uncompromising boundary for the Germanic enemy. They were not allowed to cross – Caesar started wars to punish this offence, and the legions of later times held the line on the riverbank to prevent it – until the weakened Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries could no longer stand against their unceasing pressure, and sought instead to resolve the issue by allowing them to settle peacefully on the Roman side of the river.257 Somewhat hypocritically however, the Romans apparently did not consider this limitation to apply to themselves, as they crossed the river regularly on military campaigns. This hypocrisy was even pointed out to Caesar by the Sigambri, a Germanic people on the eastern banks of the Rhine whom he had threatened with war, and who responded to Caesar’s threats by asking him why, when “the Rhine bounded the empire of the Roman people” and “if he did not think it just for the Germans to pass over into Gaul”, he himself would “claim that any thing beyond the Rhine should be subject to his dominion or power?”258

256 See also the passage in Philo, cited in note 267 below. 257 Whittaker (1994), p 158. 258 Caesar, The Gallic War 4.16. 59

Fig. 8: The fortresses of the limes on the Upper Rhine and Danube, and the land frontier of the Agri Decumates. Reproduced from Luttwak (1976), p 94-95.

Of course, Caesar paid no heed to this admonishment. He did cross the Rhine, on two separate occasions, with the stated purpose of intimidating the Germans into never entering Gaul again and chasing down foes who had fled back across the river.259 He was the first, but certainly not the last; I have already mentioned the attempts by Augustus to once and for all reduce Germany

259 Caesar, The Gallic War 4.16-18, 6.9. 60 to the state of a province. His forces probed deep enough into Germany to cross the Elbe river and set up an altar on the north bank.260 Even after the hope of definitive conquest was crushed by the defeat of Varus in 9 CE, many other campaigns across the Rhine would follow. Under Tiberius, only a few years later, Germanicus waged a retaliatory war against the Germans and even managed to reclaim two of the legionary standards lost in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The third was recovered in another campaign during the reign of Claudius.261 Archaeological evidence dating from this same period also demonstrates some measure of military activity and presence in the Black Forest, just east of the Upper Rhine, at that time.262 Under the emperors of the Flavian dynasty, in the last third of the first century CE, this process continued. Following a Germanic campaign by Domitian, this same area was settled and incorporated into the so-called Agri Decumates, a small strip of land linking the upper reaches of the Rhine and Danube rivers, protected by a string of forts, and the only permanent Roman conquest to the east of the Rhine, which lasted until the late third century (see Figure 8).263 Luttwak saw this act as evidence for a concerted effort to establish a shorter, more efficient and ‘scientific’ frontier line, but the Romans’ lack of accurate geographical knowledge makes such a calculated move unlikely.264 Whatever the reason for it was, this was to be the final expansion of the Empire on the north-western front. Even the great emperor Trajan, who successfully moved the limits of the Empire beyond the Danube and (briefly) the Euphrates, did not cross the Rhine. Still, the lands around the fortified Rhine remained a recurrent battleground, the site of a constant pattern of invasion and retaliation, with both Romans and Germans trying to cross the river, until the very end. We have seen that even well into the fourth century, the emperor Julian could cross the Rhine on a German campaign.265 Although permanent conquest of Germania Magna and its incorporation as a province of the Empire was no longer a realistic option after the first century CE, and the system of official client states declined after the Julio-Claudian dynasty ended,266 it is apparent that the Romans always felt entitled to enter into the lands beyond the Rhine and meddle in the affairs of its various tribes and lords. Tribute was exacted – both financially and militarily, by the recruitment of auxiliary soldiers from friendly peoples like the Batavii and Frisii across the Lower Rhine – and tribal chiefs were

260 Cassius Dio 55.10a. 261 Cassius Dio 60.8. 262 Whittaker (1994), p 45. 263 Appian, Roman History pr.4 probably refers to this area as he claims that “some of the Celts beyond the Rhine are under Roman sway”, just as the Dacians beyond the Rhine were. 264 Luttwak (1976), p 89-92. Whittaker (1994), p 66-67. 265 See note 252, above. 266 See Luttwak (1976), p 20-30, for an extensive and, to my mind, still relevant analysis of this system, including its application among the tribes beyond the Rhine border. 61 appointed and deposed through Roman intervention. Even as it defined the borders of the Empire and served as a defensive barrier against the barbarians, the Romans never recognized any limit to their own power and authority. This essential fact is illustrated nicely in a passage by Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher at the head of an embassy to Caligula in 40 CE. He presents the Rhine and Euphrates rivers as significant dividers and military barriers, with the Rhine “confining Germany and all the more uncivilized nations”. At the same time, he asserts that the emperor held sovereignty over the entire world, even beyond these rivers.267 Apparently, he did not consider these statements to be contradictory. To my mind, these two common and simultaneous tendencies in Roman thought on rivers – that they were natural boundaries, and yet that Roman power should and did extend across these boundaries – can be reconciled through an understanding of a third attitude towards rivers and nature in general often revealed by Roman texts and actions – namely, that the power of nature is something to be conquered by the bold and great, made to submit to the might of Rome. Crossing or bridging a river, precisely because of all the dangers both military and religious that make it a natural boundary, was a victory over nature itself, and a demonstration of Roman power. As luck would have it, there are several sources available to us showing that the Romans thought of the Rhine in these terms as well. In a speech praising the virtues and accomplishments of Julius Caesar, for example, Cicero lists among these accomplishments the submission of the Rhine, Ocean, and Nile – rather prominently, too, wedged in between the nameless “provinces which you [Caesar] have added to the empire” and “your countless battles”.268 Likewise, Lucan pictures the Rhine as “chained” by Caesar.269 An epigram by Martial addressed to the emperor Domitian, away on northern campaigns late in the first century CE, brags of two conquered rivers. Firstly, “the Danube warmed by the trampling of horses’ feet”; apparently the emperor and his army had crossed the river on horseback. Secondly, “the Rhine, with its presumptuous horn already thrice broken”; presumably this refers to three separate crossings by Domitian.270 Here, the river (or perhaps the river god271) is personified to a high degree; the word “presumptuous” implies arrogance or pride on the side of the river, and Martial seems to regard its submission to the Empire with a certain measure of glee. Around the same time and in a similar vein, Statius refers to the Rhine “twice brought beneath our yoke”.272 The ideological trope of conquest over the Rhine was not confined to the realms of poetry

267 Philo, Embassy to Gaius 10 (English transl. http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book40.html). 268 Cicero, For Marcellus 28 (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book40.html). 269 Lucan, Pharsalia 3.76 (English transl. D.B. Killings 1996). 270 Martial, Epigrams 7.7 (English transl. W.S. Bohn 1897). 271 Note also the use of bull imagery in the word “horn”. See Chapter I, above. 272 Statius, Thebaid 1.19 (English transl. J.H. Mozley 1928). 62 and oratory, however. We see it expressed in a different form in Caesar’s own Gallic War, as the usually concise author goes into great detail on the construction of his first bridge across the Rhine. Caesar describes the structure and dimensions of the bridge so comprehensively that it can be reconstructed with ease,273 and proudly boasts that the entire work had been completed in only ten days’ time. Even more tellingly, in explaining his reasons for constructing this bridge, Caesar dismisses the alternative option of crossing the Rhine by boat as neither safe nor “consistent with his own dignity or that of the Roman people”. It simply had to be a bridge, despite “the greatest difficulty […] on account of the breadth, rapidity, and depth of the river”.274 The bridge is presented as a great accomplishment in itself, quite apart from the battles against the barbarians; it is a victory over the dangerous river, and a symbol of the “dignity” of Rome. In the previous chapter, I made reference to the curious phenomenon of including personifications of rivers among the symbols of conquered peoples carried in triumphal processions. There are three known instances of the defeated Rhine being presented in this way, all dating from around the beginning of the Principate, when the Rhine first came to prominence in the Empire.275 The first is the triumph held for Caesar in 46 BCE for his victories in the Gallic Wars, described briefly by Florus, who mentions only the Rhine, Rhone, and Ocean – the three significant watery boundaries crossed during the war – “represented in gold”. 276 It can be assumed that these were golden statues of the anthropomorphised river gods, of the common type described in Chapter I, above. The second instance is the ovation (a lesser triumph) of Drusus in 11 BCE, given to celebrate his extensive campaign in Germany, part of Augustus’ plan to conquer Germania Magna. The procession is described rather poetically by Ovid – who, being in exile, did not witness it himself but heard reports of it – and includes “the Rhine himself”, “with broken horns” and “discoloured with blood”. Similar terms are used to describe Germany itself, which is also represented, personified, “sorrowing at the feet of the undefeated leader”.277 The river is put on the same level as the country and its people, and its submission is gleefully related to us. The fact that both are represented separately also disproves the notion that the river is merely a symbol here for the people living on its banks; instead, it is a victim of Roman power in its own right. The third and final known triumphal procession including the Rhine was the ovation of Caligula in 40 CE, which

273 For example, see Figure 1 on the cover page, and Graafstal (2002), p 13. 274 Caesar, The Gallic War 4.17-18. 275 Vollkommer (1994), p 3-4. 276 Florus, Epitome of Roman History 4.2.88. 277 Ovid, Tristia 4.2. 63 celebrated his abortive expedition to Germany, soundly mocked by Suetonius.278 Details are scarce, but a satire by Persius mentions preparations for the celebration, including “vast paintings of the Rhine”.279 One final piece of evidence is provided by a large bronze equestrian statue of Domitian that once stood on the Forum Romanum, erected in 91 CE following the emperor’s victories in Germany, and Dacia beyond the Danube. The object itself is now lost, but a lavish description of it is provided by Statius in a poem dedicated entirely to the statue.280 Under the horse’s hooves, he tells us, lay “the flowing tresses of captive Rhine”, submitted to the Empire, trampled underfoot – curiously, Dacia and the Danube do not appear to have been directly represented.281 The reference to tresses of hair appears to imply that once again, the river’s image was an anthropomorphised one, while the use of the word “captive” evokes the atmosphere of a triumphal procession, with the disgraced Rhine as a prisoner of war. The same statue may be represented on a coin type dating from roughly the same period (see Figure 9), although the identification is uncertain.282

Fig. 9: Plaster cast of Domitianic sesterce, London. Reproduced from Vollkommer (1994), p 6.

It is clear that the Rhine, natural boundary and defensive frontier though it was certainly thought to be, was not considered the definitive limit of Roman power or expansion. Under Augustus, serious attempts were made to expand the Empire beyond the river, and many later

278 Suetonius, Caligula 43-49 (English transl. J.C. Rolfe 1913-1914). 279 Persius, Satires 6.47 (English transl. A.S. Kline 2011). 280 Statius, Silvae 1.1, cited in Vollkommer (1994), p 4-5. 281 Statius, Silvae 1.1.50-51. 282 Vollkommer (1994), p 5-6. 64 emperors crossed it to wage war on the Germans or anyone else opposed to them. It was a mighty river, but it could be conquered, and indeed the Romans kept on conquering it. At least until the end of the first century CE, the defeat of the mighty river and the breaking of its “presumptuous horn” remained a point of great pride. In a way, the fact that it was only then, a century and a half since Julius Caesar first bridged the river, that the submission of the Rhine to Rome had apparently been complete and apparent enough to stop boasting about it, is a testament to its significance as a boundary.

Conclusion In the Rhine and its representation in our sources we can find an excellent expression of the complex Roman perception of rivers as boundaries, the outline of which I have presented in the first two chapters of this thesis. Rivers were natural boundaries to Roman eyes, and as a consequence of this belief, the river Rhine was chosen to be a boundary; a border to the Empire and a frontier to guard against its enemies. This may seem an irrational choice to us now, but in fact it was entirely and rationally consistent with the specifically Roman view of the landscape around them. This river, like all others, was a god, and a powerful one at that – Father Rhine, as he was called on at least one occasion – and crossing it was a dangerous endeavour, calling for ritual and prayer. This was not a purely metaphysical belief; Roman strategic thinking, for better or worse, clearly considered the crossing of rivers to be a perilous undertaking in a very practical sense, either exposing oneself to the unpredictable current and leaving oneself vulnerable to ambush, or building a bridge, which was a time-consuming process and left a path open for enemies to use as well. So rivers were dangerous things to both the religious and the military mind. But what’s more, from the Roman point of view, these two realms could not be entirely separated. Living in secular times, we are often inclined to disregard religious factors when dealing with practical matters, but we have seen that the Roman worship of the Rhine was especially prevalent in the military context of the legions stationed along the bank; as they guarded it from attack, ordinary soldiers offered up their weapons to the river, and their commanders erected altars and made sacrifices in their name. The inherent duality of the river, its power to protect and shield, but also to betray and destroy, made it into a sacred thing to be appeased by worship, while conversely its divinity made its power seem all the greater. The two different faces of the river – the physical and the transcendental – were intertwined and reinforced each other, and both of them consolidated its nature as a natural boundary to be respected. But the respect of the Romans for boundaries and powers beside their own only went so far. Theirs was a deeply imperialistic culture, and the emperors claimed sovereignty over the entire 65 world. The mighty rivers, like the Rhine, that shielded the Empire from its enemies, could also be crossed and used as a staging ground for further conquest or retaliatory strikes against rebellious barbarians. In essence, the Romans thought of it as primarily a boundary for their enemies; they themselves could cross it whenever they pleased, and took pride in this ability. Moreover, the history of the western frontiers of the Empire appears to follow a pattern, in which consecutive stages of expansion led to new, temporary river boundaries: at the start of Caesar’s Gallic War, the Rhone was the border of the Empire, and a line the barbarians – but not the Romans – were forbidden to cross. But when his conquests were done, the Rhine had taken its place. And even though Luttwak’s argument that Augustus aimed to establish the Elbe as a definitive ‘scientific’ frontier must certainly be dismissed, there is some evidence to suggest that this river might have become the next river frontier.283 As a result of the Varian disaster, however, the Roman conquest was finally halted, and they were forced to fall back to the previous frontier on the Rhine.

283 Most prominently the altar referred to in note 260 above, which appears to suggest that the river was brought under the religious control of the Empire, establishing it as a sacred boundary and a symbol of Roman power no doubt intended to intimidate the barbarians. See also Florus, Epitome of Roman History 4.12.21-39. 66

67 General conclusion In this thesis, I have attempted to put forward a different way of conceptualising the river frontiers of the Roman Empire, based on the way the Roman textual sources – like the words of Tacitus quoted in the Introduction: “[the Empire] enclosed by the Ocean or distant rivers” – themselves portrayed these rivers. As such, my argument can be regarded as a call for a rehabilitation of these sources, which have fallen by the wayside of late, far too casually dismissed as misrepresentations by the consensus view which has emerged from the debate. From the perspective of the authors of these sources, and based on their own unique cultural outlook on landscape, of which the religious veneration of rivers as deities was a significant part, rivers were certainly natural boundaries, and the Rhine, at least, was certainly a military and political boundary marking the limits of the Empire. However, history indicates that the Romans did not recognize these boundaries, as natural as they were thought to be, as anything more than temporary, for themselves at least; they were always more than willing, even proud, to cross these powerful and dangerous boundaries to meddle in the affairs of the barbarians beyond, and for a long time, actual conquest beyond the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates was still very much on the agenda as part of the great imperialistic project which claimed sovereignty over the entire world. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that if this had been achieved, and there were further great rivers at hand, these rivers would have been chosen as the new, equally temporary borders. This complex understanding of river boundaries and what they meant to the Romans and their Empire is the key to resolving the apparent contradictions in our sources, which often alternate between acclaiming rivers as defensive frontiers and boasting of the power of Rome extending well beyond their streams. In this way, it is superior to the model proposed by Whittaker, which is in some ways surprisingly similar to mine, asserting that the Rhine and Danube were merely dividers, chosen for the sake of convenience, between the officially administrated Empire and the looser sphere of influence that stretched beyond them, but maintains that the great rivers had a purely logistical function and thereby fails to account not only for Roman religious views on rivers, but also for the many sources which clearly attribute a defensive military purpose to these rivers. As is always the case in a work of history, several further questions must remain unanswered here. Most prominent among these is the question with which Luttwak, who started the debate this thesis is engaged with, was originally concerned: why did the frontiers stop where they did? Why did the Empire fail to expand far beyond the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates? Even with the understanding that the Romans considered rivers, certainly ones as great as these three, to be natural boundaries, the answer is not self-evident. Other rivers could have fulfilled the same role, and we

68 have seen that the Romans did not renounce their plans of conquest just for having reached them. Luttwak’s idea, that the Empire had reached its ‘scientific’ frontiers, must certainly be dismissed, but I can offer no argument here in support of an alternative answer. The matter of ‘grand strategy’ and the ultimate stop of the imperial advance must be left to other contributors. Furthermore, I have been unable to trace the historical development of the phenomena and common tendencies explored in this thesis in great detail. The greater part of my sources dates to the late Republic and early Empire; these sources, considered from the proper perspective, are remarkably consistent, but it may very well be that the Roman attitude towards boundaries in general shifted during the late Empire to be more strictly defensive – there must have come a point when the Romans in their crumbling Empire gave up on their dreams of world conquest. In addition, many of the sources describing the official state worship of river and spring deities date to a much earlier point in Roman history, and these rites and ceremonies may have disappeared towards the end of the Imperial era. At the same time, the slow rise of Christianity no doubt affected the religious perception of rivers, and this in turn must have changed the role of rivers in the imperial system. These developments, too, I must leave to others to explore.

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