barbarian friends and foes beyond rhine and danube 213 BarBarian Friends and Foes: Hegemony Beyond Rhine and danuBe, ad 14–98 Susan Mattern 1. Overview in the epitaph published on the bronze doors of his mausoleum and on his temples throughout the empire, augustus still claimed dominion over ger- many as far as the elbe river: i pacified the gallic and spanish provinces, and germany; all that the ocean surrounds from Cadiz to the mouth of the elbe (RG 26). in the year of his death, ad 14, his grand-nephew by adoption germanicus waged war across the rhine with eight of the empire’s 25 legions. in three campaigns between 14 and 16 he sacked barbarian villages and slaughtered their inhabitants, recaptured two of the legionary eagle-standards lost with Quintilius Varus, discovered the scene of the defeat at Teutoburg, and bur- ied the bones of Varus’ men. He also suffered a catastrophic reverse on land and wrecked a fleet, and Tiberius recalled him in ad 16. germanicus cele- brated a triumph and his victory was also commemorated on monumental arches in rome and on the rhine after his death in 19. By ad 98, Tacitus writes of the germans as a free people or group of peoples that has successfully resisted roman domination for hundreds of years (Germ. 37). in retrospect, he and other sources attributed to augustus a decision to abandon roman ambitions beyond the rhine, and some modern scholars have similarly described a policy of entrenchment and consolidation in europe in the course of the 1st Century ad.1 However, the evidence is complicated. in Tacitus’ time, rome already claimed control over an area in what is now southwestern germany, in the crux between the upper rhine (south of the mainz river) and the upper danube, a region the historian calls the Agri decumates; this area was later occupied and 1 on augustus’ policy of confining the empire behind its boundaries at his death, with references, see mattern 1999, 90 n. 40 and 111 with n. 136; the passage in Tacitus is Ann. 1.11. modern scholars: for full discussion see Whittaker 2004, 6-8 and his chap. 2. 214 susan mattern heavily fortified.2 in 90, domitian established two provinces named ‘ger- many’; we do not know what domitian meant by giving them that name. most archaeologists see a relatively fluid and permeable frontier in most of europe, and it appears that by tradition roman provinces did not have officially delineated external boundaries (though the boundaries between provinces were known and marked).3 emperors after augustus continued to wage war across the rhine, in- cluding (in the period discussed here) gaius and domitian. These cam- paigns are poorly attested; of gaius’ campaign we know only that he amassed a huge force (dio 59.22.1) and proceeded some distance across the rhine before turning back and staging his notorious invasion of the British Channel (dio 59.21; suet. Gaius 43–46). Corbulo campaigned against the Chauci under Claudius (Tac. Ann. 11.18; dio 60.31). domitian waged a war on the Chatti (ad 83), for which he raised a new legion (this was rare in the imperial period), constructed 120 miles of roads into ger- many, and used a large force of five rhine legions plus detachments from nine others. although ancient sources agree that he achieved little, he proclaimed ‘germania Capta’.4 on the danube frontier, augustus had claimed conquest of the king- dom of the daci, even beyond the danube (RG 30), although post-augustan sources describe the danube as the boundary of the roman empire. Ti- berius had campaigned across the river in the territory of the marcoman- ni—apparently in an effort to conquer the remainder of what the romans called germany—but he withdrew when illyricum revolted in ad 6. domi- tian campaigned across the danube against the sarmatians, dacians, mar- comanni, and Quadi. This war is very poorly attested and it is unclear under what circumstances it began. ancient sources attribute to the dacians the disastrous defeat of the consular oppius sabinus and also of domitian’s legate Cornelius Fuscus—apparently entrusted with the campaign of re- taliation—and the destruction of a legion; the dacians cut off sabinus’ head. domitian transferred one legion from germany to Pannonia, aban- doning his campaign on the rhine; one from dalmatia; and one from Brit- ain, notoriously curtailing agricola’s conquest of scotland. He made what ancient sources describe as a disgraceful peace with the dacian king, 2 Tac. Germ. 29; Hind 1984; sommer 2002. 3 For extensive discussion see Whittaker 1994 and 2004. 4 on domitian’s war against the germans see strobel 1987..