The Limits of Empire in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus1
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THE LIMITS OF EMPIRE IN THE RES GESTAE OF AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS1 Jan Willem Drijvers Introduction In the Res Gestae of the emperor Augustus we read the following: I extended the borders of all those provinces of the Roman people on whose borders lay people not subject to our government. I brought peace to the Gallic and Spanish provinces, as well as to Germany, throughout the area bordering on the ocean from Cadiz to the mouth of the Elbe . My fleet sailed through the ocean eastwards from the mouth of the Rhineto the territory of the Cimbri, a country which no Roman had visited before either by land or sea, and the Cimbri, Charydes, Semnones and other Germanpeoplesofthatregionsentambassadorsandsoughtmyfriendship and that of the Roman people.2 One of the interesting aspects of this passage is Augustus’ claim of Ger- man territory as part of the Roman Empire whereas, according to mod- ern historians, Rome had not officially—albeit in effect—given up her efforts to conquer and incorporate the parts of Germany between the mouths of the Rhine and the Elbe not long after the disastrous battle in the Teutoburg Forest in ad.3 Thereafter the rivers Rhine and Danube 1 I wish to thank Mark Graham, Daan den Hengst and Nick Hodgson for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Special thanks are due to Benjamin Isaac for his willingness to comment on a paper many of the views of which he does not share; I profited greatly from his critical remarks and he made me reconsider some of my opinions or put them forward in a more nuanced way. Alasdair MacDonald was kind enough to correct my English. 2 .–: Omnium provinciarum populi Romani quibus finitimae fuerunt gentes quae non parerent imperio nostro fines auxi. Gallias et Hispanias provincias, item Germaniam, qua includit Oceanus a Gadibus ad ostium Albis fluminis pacavi . Classis mea per Oceanum ab ostio Rheni ad solis orientis regionem usque ad fines Cimbrorum navigavit, quo neque terra neque mari quisquam Romanus ante id tempus adit, Cimbrique et Chary- des et Semnones et eiusdem tractus alii Germanorum populi per legatos amicitiam meam et populi Romani petierunt;tr.Brunt&Moore. 3 On the Res Gestae as a geographical survey and catalogue of conquests asserting Rome’s control over the orbis terrarum,seeC.Nicolet,Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor ), Chapters and . Jan Willem Drijvers - 9789004215030 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 12:31:19PM via free access jan willem drijvers had become the demarcation lines between the Roman Empire and the ‘barbaricum’. However, Augustus and his contemporaries seem to have had a different concept of Roman territory than modern historians. The Romans still adhered to the idea of an imperium sine fine.Actualcon- quest, occupation, and provincialisation were apparently not necessary to let them consider Germania as part of the world under Roman imperium. This attitude has consequences for how the Romans perceived frontiers or borders in the early imperial period. The concept of an imperial fron- tier seems to have had little meaning and the Romans in the early Empire seem not to have been accustomed to thinking about frontiers as physical and static boundaries.4 Over time, however, the notion of imperium sine fine disappeared and sincethethirdcenturytheRomanscametoseetheirempiremoreand more in terms of defined territory.5 Along with this new idea of empire as a defined territory, a consciousness of frontiers as dividing lines between Roman territory and the regions that lay beyond those lines seems to have developed. The perception that there were actual limits to the territory of the imperium of Rome was no doubt prompted by the threats made by northern ‘barbarians’ from the end of the second century onwards to what was considered Roman domain, and by the military invasions in the eastern provinces undertaken by the Sassanid Empire in the third century. Four centuries after Augustus, the new consciousness of limits to Roman territory is well expressed by St. Augustine. Augustine, contem- plating that Terminus, the god of boundaries, had several times given ground to Rome’s enemies, refers to Julian’s disastrous Persian campaign of and the peace agreement that his successor Jovian was forced to conclude with the Sassanid king Shapur II. Territorial concessions had to be made: the city of Nisibis and five Transtigritane regions were surren- dered to the Persians.6 Augustine remarks that peace was made and that the boundaries of the empire were fixed where they remain today, i.e. as in the second decade of the fifth century.7 Augustine uses the terms fines and termini, clearly indicating that there was an apprehension that there 4 M.W. Graham, News and Frontier Consciousness in the Late Roman Empire (Ann Arbor ), ix. 5 Graham , op. cit. (n. ), . 6 Ammianus Marcellinus (Teubner edition, W.Seyfarth, Leipzig ), ..– and J. den Boeft et al., Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXV (Leiden ), ff. 7 Augustinus, De Civitate Dei .: placito pacis illic imperii fines constituerentur, Jan Willem Drijvers - 9789004215030 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 12:31:19PM via free access limits of empire in ammianus marcellinus’ res gestae existed either a defined or an abstract end to Roman territory and that in territorial terms Rome in Late Antiquity was not an imperium sine fine anymore.8 The last decades have seen an increasing interest in the concept of the Roman frontier or border.9 There are many kinds of frontiers or borders—e.g. political, economic, cultural, religious, judicial, social. In this article I shall deal with frontiers/borders in the territorial and mili- tary sense. The usual Roman term for land boundary is limes.Originally,theword wasusedbylandsurveyorstoindicatetheboundaryorlimitbetween fields, consisting of a path or a balk. Subsequently, the term was also used to indicate the actual path or a road. Like the Roman concept of territory the meaning of limes changed over time in the Roman imperial period, and can have several meanings: a strip of ground marking the division of land; a boundary of a plot of land; a piece of land enclosed within boundaries; a national boundary or frontier; a dividing line; a lane, track or road; a line of travel or route; a trail.10 Modern interpretation and understanding of the term limes has been heavily influenced by the imperialistic and colonial ideology of the nineteenth century. It was seen as a dividing line between the civilised and the barbarian. In accordance with this line of thinking the limes was therefore used as referring to the Roman defence system along the border of the empire, with permanent defensive structures such as garrison camps, watch towers, patrolling river fleets, and even walls of which the main purpose was to keep the ubi hodieque persistent.InDe Civitate Dei . Augustine remarks that the boundaries of the Roman Empire were changed (Romani imperii termini moverentur)afterJulian’s expedition. 8 Ideologically, Roman propaganda still considered the late Roman empire as sine fine. However, there was a clear sense of reality that there were actual limits to the empire; see J. Arce, ‘Frontiers of the late Roman Empire: perceptions and realities’, in W. Pohl— I. Wood—H. Reimitz (eds.), The Transformation of Frontiers. From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians (Leiden ), –. 9 E.g. S.L. Dyson, The Creation of the Roman Frontier (Princeton ); A.D. Lee, Information and Frontiers. Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge ); C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire. A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore— London ); H. Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Bloomington—Indianapolis ); D. Williams, The Reach of Rome. A History of the Roman Imperial Frontier th– th centuries ad (London ); D. Cherry, Frontier and Society in Roman North Africa (Oxford ); S.P. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy. Imperial Strategy in the Principate (Berkeley—Los Angeles—London ), ff.; C.R. Whittaker, Rome and its Frontiers: The Dynamics of Empire (London ). 10 Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. limes. Jan Willem Drijvers - 9789004215030 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 12:31:19PM via free access jan willem drijvers barbarian out. Even though many scholars have nuanced this one-sided meaning of limes, the term is still often associated with a frontier of military character, demarcating Roman territory from that beyond, and meant to keep outsiders out of the Roman Empire, or at least to regulate the crossing of the border by outsiders entering the empire.11 To my knowledge, the first scholar to challenge the understanding of limes as a system of military defence was Benjamin Isaac, in an article published in .12 Isaac argues that limes never had the meaning of military defended border or defence against barbarians in any period of the Roman Empire, and that it never indicated a permanent defensive system of military installations or referred to a formal military and administrative organisation.13 Isaac notes that in the written sources from the early empire the word limes was used in the sense of a military road, a system of military roads, or a demarcated land boundary.14 The meaning of the word was thus still close to its original denotation as used by land surveyors. According to Isaac, however, in sources from the fourth century onwards, when the term occurs more often than in the earlier writings, the meaning of limes had changed. It now refers to a border district, more specifically, as Isaac mentions in the conclusion of his article, “it is the formal term used to designate a frontier district under the command of a dux”(i.e.adux limitis).15 Isaac adds that limes in Late Antiquity “denoted an administrative concept, again unconnected with themilitarystructureswhichmayhaveexistedinthearea...Innosingle case is a limes described as something made or constructed”.16 Also for the later Roman period, according to Isaac, the term limes was not used by the Romans to denote a structure of defence works along the edges of the Roman Empire.