The Histories

Rumors of a revolt in Germany were multiplying in Rome. Tacitus sets about exploring the origins of this revolt. The Batavians were a tribe from the fringes of Gaul (modern Netherlands) who resided on an island between the Rhine and the North Sea. They had been subjugated by the Romans long ago but did not need to pay taxes to them. Instead, they contributed famously fierce soldiers to the Roman armies. Among the Batavians, the most prominent was Julius Civilis, who was of royal descent and hated Rome. He pretended to be a supporter of Vespasian and was advised by Primus to spread rumors of the German revolt to deter Vitellian reinforcements from coming to Italy from Gaul or Germany.

When he went to do this, Batavia was ready for an uprising. Roman recruitment officers had been mistreating civilians by threatening to conscript the old in the army if they were not bribed. Civilis invited leading figures in the community to a sacred grove, where he gave a speech that summoned them to action with patriotic appeals and claims of injustice. He also said that the Roman state was weak because of the civil war and that if they lost, they could still gain favor with Vespasian for fighting Vitellian armies. The Batavians wholeheartedly supported him and then spread the rebellion to Batavian units in Britian and nearby tribes. The rebellion soon scored its first military victory by overrunning a local Roman garrison and forcing the Romans to abandon many of the rest of their frontier fortresses. The Romans then gathered their forces and attacked the rebels. Early in the battle, a unit of auxiliaries defected to the rebels, and the Roman army was annihilated. The local Roman navy also revolted once its Batavian rowers took control of the ships.

With this victory, Civilis was acclaimed as a liberator, and he stirred up more revolts in Gaul and kept up the momentum of the rebellion with another victory against local Roman forces. The governor Flaccus did not respond quickly, as he was worried about the loyalty of his auxiliaries. Eventually, he decided to attack, but he failed to coordinate with the First Legion, which was consequently defeated by a group of Batavian auxiliaries.

Civilis then besieged the Roman legionary camp at Vetera, where the legionaries were amazed by the sight of the army confronting them. The mix of tribal soldiers and veteran auxiliary legionaries gave the army the simultaneous appearance of a foreign and a Roman army. Civilis’s army was unable to storm the camp and so decided to starve it out. Flaccus moved to relieve this siege but struggled to command discontent soldiers, who were irritated by his earlier delays and the poor supplies in the area and worried about a drought of the Rhine. The weakening of Rome’s natural defenses was thought to show divine disfavor. As the Roman soldiers moved north, they skirmished with another German tribe and lost, leading to them blaming their general, as was now their habit.

At this point, many tribes were supporting Civilis, and he ordered nearby, Roman-aligned, tribes to be attacked. When they received news of the Flavian victories in northern Italy, Civilis officially broke off from them. He led a portion of his army to attack the 22nd Legion, the only remaining Roman forces on the German border. He surprised the legion in its camp, but its general, Vocula, was able to keep his forces together, and a timely attack on the Batavian rear panicked the rebel army. Vocula was then able to defeat the Batavians besieging Vetera and lift the siege. However, Civilis realized that the Romans were struggling to supply themselves, and by attacking their supply chains, he forced Vocula to retreat. In his absence, he besieged Vetera again. The Roman soldiers soon rioted against Flaccus because of his Flavian loyalty and killed him. They tried to kill Vocula too, but he hid until the troops calmed down.

In Rome, Vespasian and Titus were appointed consuls in abstentia, as they had still not arrived in the city. Domitian was technically head of government, but Mucianus acted as the ruler. When Domitian first formally entered the Senate, he gave a short speech about his father and brother, which was well received (which, Tacitus says, meant that many were deceived about his true character). Domitian proposed that Galba should be honored again, that a committee should be chosen to restore stolen property during the wars, that the bronze tablets that contained Rome’s laws should be restored, that the official calendars should be fixed, and that the expenditure should be brought under control. Senators also began to take revenge on leading figures who had previously prosecuted them or deprived them of property. The Senate argued with itself over the right actions and whether they should speak out against each other until Domitian and Mucianus urged them to stop. Tacitus says that the Senate then “quickly abandoned its newly won freedom of speech as soon as it met with opposition” and gave in to its subservient role to emperors (211).

Vespasian then set out to Italy. On the way, he heard stories about Domitian’s ignominious conduct, which Titus begged Vespasian to ignore. Vespasian, delighted by Titus’s loyalty, left him in charge of the siege of Jerusalem and then sailed to Rome. In Rome, they were beginning to reconstruct the buildings destroyed in the final days of Vitellius’s reign.

Meanwhile, the news of the rebellion’s successes doubled the scale of the Batavian revolt. Without Civilis’s Flavian pretenses, some Vitellian legions decided that they preferred his rule to Vespasian’s and prepared to defect. The Treviri and Lingones auxiliaries (led by Classicus and Sabinus, respectively) decided to instigate further revolts of Gallic tribes and entice more legionaries to join them. They felt that if they could take Gaul and strongly garrison the Alps, the Romans would not be able to defeat the rebellion. Vocula, marching against Vetera again, saw the Treviri and Lingones rebelling and warned them that Rome was not so weak that these rebellions would go unpunished. He believed that the rebellions were the fault of light rule in Gaul. If the tribes were defeated, they would revert to their previous status as subjects. Vocula then set up a camp near the Treviri and Lingones. Many Romans defected to the rebel cause in what Tacitus describes as an “unparalleled outrage” (220). Vocula decided to call his troops together and give a speech to them in which he summoned them to remember the loyalty that Romans used to have, told them that they would soon be rewarded for their victories, and asked them if they would invade Italy with the Germans when it came to this. He then withdrew and prepared to die by suicide but was talked out of it. Amelius Longinus, a deserter, snuck into camp and murdered Vocula shortly after. Classicus then entered the Roman camp dressed as a Roman general and had the soldiers swear loyalty to the rebellion.

Afterward, the rebels besieged the city of Colonia Agrippinesium and forced further auxiliaries to rebel. The Roman soldiers at Mogontiacum held out for some time but, once starving, swore loyalty to the new Gallic confederation that was forming. Tacitus criticizes them for this, saying that it tarnished their record of brave defiance. By this time, Civilis had started to present himself more openly as Germanic through choices such as wearing his hair long and dying it red. However, he did not swear loyalty to the Gauls, as he hoped to fight them after the war with Rome ended. A woman named Veleda also gained importance in the rebellion. She was seen to be a prophet or goddess, and her predictions of a German victory were taken as proof by many.

The remaining local legions retreated in what Tacitus believes was a disgraceful display of Roman weakness. Yet, while they were retreating, they found Vocula’s murderer and killed him. At Colonia Agrippinesium, the rebels tried to convince the city to join the German side and kill the Romans in their territory. The citizens of the city did not want to alienate Rome but did not want to be sacked by the rebels. They replied that they could not kill the local Romans, as they were intermarried with locals.

Sabinus soon led an attack against a loyalist tribe called the Sequani. The Sequani routed Sabinus’s Lingones, and many believed that Sabinus died by suicide shortly after the battle (though Tacitus says that he actually hid in obscurity for nine more years). The victory of the Sequani took the momentum out of the war. Gallic tribes decided to meet to decide if they wanted peace with Rome instead of independence.

Mucianus was still worried about the revolt and about leaving Domitian in Rome when he moved to confront it. Domitian himself wanted to lead an army against the revolt but was dissuaded by Mucianus, who set about gathering provincial reinforcements. The news of the reinforcing legions being summoned increased the doubts of several Gallic tribes, leading some to give up their revolt and seek a pardon. Those that still fought in the rebellion were not acting under a unified plan; armies were attacking disparate targets while Classicus wasted time idly as if the war was already won. Meanwhile, Roman legions were already counterattacking, forcing several tribes back to their loyalty. The Treviri were also defeated in battle, and their morale wavered until one of their leaders executed a captured legionary commander, making a pardon less likely and thus committing them to fighting.

The Roman general Petilius Cerialis reached the remaining forces and increased morale through his evident eagerness to fight the Germans. He quickly led his army to storm several towns while pardoning any who surrendered to ensure that they did not have a reason to fight on. Tacitus includes a speech that Cerialis supposedly gave to defeated members of the Treviri and Lingones tribes. In this, he justifies the Roman occupation of Gallic land by saying that the Romans had been invited there to stop the Germans from attacking them. He claims that Civilis and the German tribes do not care for their independence and are using calls to liberty as a pretext to take power. Cerialis further argues that Roman rule is more acceptable than any other would be and urges them to learn to love the Roman system. This speech and Cerialis’s treatment did much to reassure the Gallic people, who were worried that they would be punished.

Later, the Germans assaulted Cerialis’s camp, which caught him unprepared. However, Cerialis rallied enough soldiers to save the situation and rout the rebels (who were distracted by looting once in the camp). Cerialis exploited his victory well, attacking the rebel camp and moving on to recapture Colonia Agrippinesium (which had revolted against the Germans and invited the Romans in to help).

Back in Rome, Mucianus gave orders for Vitellius’s son to be put to death and stopped Primus from joining Domitian’s staff, as he did not want those two to work together against him. Primus then left to join Vespasian on his way to Rome, where he was poorly received because of his haughty manner and the influence of Mucianus’s letters on Vespasian.

Tacitus claims that in the months Vespasian spent in Alexandria, many miracles occurred, including Vespasian’s healing of a blind man and repairing of a man’s broken hand. The man with the broken hand had approached Vespasian because of advice he received in the temple of the god Serapis, and so Vespasian decided to visit this temple. Once there, he allegedly received a vision about his sons. Tacitus delves into the mythical origin of Serapis. He tells a story of Ptolemy I, the first Macedonian King of Egypt, receiving visions that led to him ordering a statue of Serapis to Egypt from Pontus. However, he also mentions that there are other variations of this story.

Tacitus says that he will now return to the narrative. Domitian and Mucianus were approaching the Alps with an army to reinforce the Romans in Gaul. When they got there, they heard about the Roman victories, and Mucianus convinced Domitian that he should not lead the armies to the frontline. Apparently, Domitian sent letters to Cerialis at this point, asking whether he would hand his army over so that Domitian could launch an imperial challenge. Cerialis responded evasively, and Domitian realized that he was not well liked and decided to focus on studies to hide his real character.