The Evolution of Emperor Worship

As you may have read a few weeks ago, Augustus Caesar was the first Emperor, whose authority was more of a subtle, de facto kind of rule, rather than the flamboyance of his descendants. He was also the first person to introduce the concept of a living divine leader into Roman politics, which had for almost five hundred years avoided deifying their leaders, unlike the Greeks and Egyptians. When Julius Caesar was deified post mortem by a guilty Senate, Augustus wasted no time in adding “son of god” to his list of many titles. As such, people were much more hesitant to go against him, for fear that their anger at his naked power grabbing might be perceived as impiety by the masses who adored him.

This is not to say that the Romans were all Agnostic pragmatists before Augustus Caesar, far from it. Many a popular assembly was disrupted or canceled because some appointed Pontifex claimed ill omens, signs which only seemed to appear when the assembly favored policies which the Senate opposed. Sometimes, this was seen for the crass undemocratic interruption that it was, but other times it succeeded.

Gaius Marius claimed to have found an eagle's nest with seven baby chicks in it – a large number of baby eagles for a single nest. He and his followers claimed that this was a sign from the gods that he was meant to serve seven terms as Consul, something that helped to sway Plebeian support for the unorthodox multiple terms that he served. The people of Rome recognized, for better or worse, that there was a law higher than the Roman codes.

Augustus took things a step further by claiming to be God's son, since God was Julius Caesar. By endowing himself with divine status, confirmed by the Senate's own apotheosis, he set the stage for the later Emperors and the Popes after them to claim infallibility. He also removed a key element to becoming a deity within his culture: dying. He was to his people a living, breathing divine entity, capable of bringing great good to his allies and terrible wrath upon his enemies.

It is really no wonder that this sort of thing got carried way too far by those who came after. It wasn't long before people were required to burn incense to the images of the sitting Emperor in order to enter local marketplaces as far away as Palestine and Asia Minor. But even deification couldn't save some Emperors from disfavor and assassination, as it seems even Roman piety had its limits.

Pax vobiscum

Adequate Aqueducts

In my study of history, it seems that there are at least two kinds of empires: the conquest empire and the sustainable empire. Famous warrior-kings like Alexander the Great forged conquest empires by marching their armies into foreign lands and conquering everything in sight. Alexander's in particular is an impressive conquest empire, but it fell apart as soon as he died, splintering into petty kingdoms ruled over by his former Generals. Sustainable empires, on the other hand, outlast their conquerors and fall into a pattern of subservience and reliance on their master kingdom. Rome had its share of both over the years, but places like Spain, Germany, Asia Minor, Sicily, North Africa, Greece, and regional Italy itself gradually fell into a permanent territorial status.

How does an army win a battle? Tactics. How does a nation win a war? Logistics. How does a country maintain a far-reaching empire? Engineering. Yes, if there's one thing the Romans had a monopoly on, it was practical engineering. Where the Greeks and Egyptians saw religion, the Romans saw potential. They specialized in making mysterious concepts like pi work for both their citizens and their conquered clients. One of their most amazing achievements was the Aqueduct.

In Rome alone, there was probably 500 km of aqueducts, allowing the city to support a million people. Throughout their empire, they regularly built and maintained these massive pipe and stone structures in order to ensure a potable water supply, as well as control over where the local went and who got to drink. When a city rebelled, step one of retaking it was taking the head of the aqueduct and cutting off their supply. Likewise, when Rome was attacked, the first step in defense was deploying the most elite troops to guard the water supply and ensure that a siege would prove too costly to maintain, especially if the attackers could not find a supply of their own.

In order to build a proper aqueduct, the surrounding land needed thorough surveying and measurement. The angles employed to ensure a 'just-right' flow of water were often very subtle, and the slightest overcompensation in the grade would either slow the supply to a trickle or cause an overflow which could lead to a nasty flood.

It is easy to find remains of the aqueducts in many parts of the ancient empire, including Spain and modern-day Turkey. What we see is only a fraction of what existed, and what still exists beneath our feet. Of all the aqueduct and piping laid by the Romans, most was underground and only a small percentage used those famous arches that we see still standing today.

Pax vobiscum

The Centurion's Riddle

Quick: how many soldiers did a centurion command?  If you guessed one hundred, you are dead wrong.  Don't feel bad, though, a lot of people have gotten this wrong for hundreds of years.  A centurion, in the days of the early Republic, commanded about 60 men, or half of a maniple.  Later centurions of the early Imperial Era commanded around 80.  So why the confusion?

Basically, it comes down to a problem of language.  Centum is Latin for one hundred, and it's where we get the terms centimeter, centigrade, century, and cent.  There is a similar word which the Romans used to describe their army divisions: Centuriae.  This word means tribe or group, and literally has almost zero relation to the word centum.  Avid readers will remember this post [link], where we learned about the Comitia Centuriata, which is translated "Tribal Assembly."

Lazy scholarship led to people assuming that centum and centuriae were related when it's clear that their similarity is purely coincidental.  Imagine a future in which the people believe that the ancient English word Career meant being able to drive a Car.

Pax vobiscum

-- On a side note, I will now be posting a little differently - All the days will continue their present themes, but they will be on an every other day/week basis.  So, Technology Tuesday and Theology Thursday will have to wait until next week, while Culture Wednesday and Famous Friday are still on track for this one.  Having babies changes everything

Hail Caesar! - Rome's First Emperor

When Julius Caesar was stabbed to death during the famous Ides of March assassination in 44 BCE, he left a power vacuum big enough to suck Rome into yet another Civil War. After some initial sieges and skirmishes, which resulted in the deaths of the two sitting Consuls, this vacuum ended up being filled by three unlikely allies who were appointed to a kind of co-dictatorship in October, 43 BCE in hopes that they would check and balance each other over the course of their five-year term. What ensued should be no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the politics of the day: a temporary and uncomfortable alliance followed by massive Civil War.

Gaius Octavius Thurinus was Julius Caesar's grand-nephew, and renamed himself Gaius Julius Caesar after his great uncle adopted him, and I assume to confuse the later students of history. In any case, Octavius, as we shall call him, proved a worthy adversary for the other members of the Second Triumvirate, leading armies to victory against both the rebel armies of Caesar's assassins and Marcus Antonius.

Like many ancient people, the Romans would occasionally deify their dead leaders, and Caesar, though he was objectively ruthless, self-seeking, and a dangerous consolidator of power, was declared by the Senate to be a patron god of Rome on January 1, 42 BCE. Octavius, capitalizing on Caesar's honor, began referring to himself as the 'son of god' and no doubt won over several followers from Rome's middle and working class through his relationship with their late champion.

After Marcus Antonius was defeated at the Battle of Actium, Octavius was in a position to increase his influence and forever alter the Roman Republic. His power as Consul increased gradually, and he was smart enough to periodically return control to the Senate, as he did in 27 BCE. However, this Oligarchical body was made up of mostly sycophants and Caesarians, since the civil wars purged most of the old Republican guard. Plus, the soldiers in the provinces, over which Octavius had been named governor, were loyal to him personally and cared nothing for an ineffectual Senate that could not deliver on land reform or veteran benefits.

In January of 27 BCE, the Roman Senate bestowed the title of Augustus upon Octavius, a name which he would carry long after his death. The word Augustus comes from the same root word as Augur, a diviner who observed the flight of birds. The title was much more than a simple political office: it meant 'illustrious one,' and carried implications that Augustus Caesar not only held power over the politics of Rome, but over nature itself.

It is from these roots that all future Emperors of Rome would reign. And though Augustus Caesar's example was full of concessions and the avoidance of appearing supreme, his descendants would of course focus on his title, which implied that the Emperor was not merely a man, but a god.

Pax vobiscum

The Battle of Alesia

In 52 BCE, the Gauls had united in a last-ditch effort against the invaders. Any one tribe who stood up to the Romans in recent memory had been utterly defeated, but now there was a new hope. The tribes had convened a council and selected one man to lead the rebel army to victory and restore freedom to their war-torn homeland. And that man's name was Vercingetorix.

Using hit-and-run cavalry tactics while taking refuge in well-defended forts gave this rebel leader a few victories over the Roman army, led by the famous and able Gaius Julius Caesar. In one such engagement, Caesar's 12 legions had attempted to storm his position at Gergovia, Vercingetorix drove them back, killing 700 legionnaires in the process and nearly causing a mass route of the entire army. Caesar was clever, though, and chose from then on to hunt down small detachments of the larger Gallic army, whittling their forces down to a more manageable size. Vercingetorix went with his typical play of strategically withdrawing his troops to a fortified position: the town of Alesia, atop a small hill.

I can only imagine the thoughts that must have consumed this last, best hope for Gaulkind watching helplessly from the city walls as the Romans built their own walls to solidify their defense. He had to witness the slow deaths of the women and children of the city, who starved to death after being expelled from the city and were then forbidden to pass through the Roman camp. He dispatched scout cavalry in an attempt to slow the construction, hoping to last until the relieving Gallic army arrived. The situation was desperate, and his men growing close to insubordinate treachery when a Gallic army of 100,000 arrived to relieve the siege. Hope was in the air that at long last, the Romans would be driven back and they would be free once again.

The Romans were now facing a battle on two fronts, but they had the luxury of their two walls, which kept them very well protected from the combined forces of 180,000. Their own 60,000 legionnaires were disciplined and well-armed; their foreign auxiliaries ready to do their part. After a few skirmishes and one night attack, the Gauls took a few sections of the Roman trench. They prepared for an all-out assault on the weakest point of the fortifications – a section where the two walls met with boulders and other natural hindrances to construction, a place Caesar had attempted to conceal.

The relieving force assaulted first, charging straight into the infantry lines and meeting the Romans steel to steel. Caesar ordered his men to hold the line while riding behind their ranks and cheering them on. He then led a counter-attack which drove off Vercingetorix's besieged men, who had sallied out of Alesia to support their Gallic compatriots. His line, weakened by the men that Caesar took to defend their rear, began to fall back and Gaius had to roll the dice. In a move both brilliant and incredibly risky, he took 6,000 cavalry with him and circled around the massive Gallic horde of 60,000, flanking them and cutting deep into their assault line. The Roman infantry, seeing their commanders risking their necks, were inspired by their bravery and pushed forward, pinching the Gallic line and causing the undisciplined tribal army to rout. Roman cavalry took over from there, hunting the fleeing soldiers down without mercy and laying waste to any hope that Vercingetorix maintained of being freed from this terrible siege.

A few days later, the mighty Gallic warlord surrendered, giving up his sword and armor to Caesar, who gladly accepted. With this defeat, Gaius Julius Caesar would forever solidify Roman domination over the Gauls.

Pax vobiscum

Julius Caesar Part II: The Later Years

When we last left old Gaius Julius Caesar, he had just won Consulship for the year in 59 BCE by a nasty, corrupt election that left no Senator clean, including Caesar's most tireless opponent, the notoriously incorruptible Cato. Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus was elected to serve as the second Consul, but would prove to be an ineffective check against his fellow executive. Supporting Caesar were Crassus, to whom Julius owed his freedom, and Pompey, whom Caesar recruited by promising to support land redistribution, a wedge issue amongst the Senators, and one that Caesar would use to cast the elite into the role of petty oligarchs and himself as the egalitarian savior of Rome.

When Caesar proposed a series of reforms designed to redistribute tracts of land to the poor, Crassus supported it on the Senate floor, while Pompey garrisoned his soldiers inside the city, frightening the moderate Senators into passing the decree. Seeking divine intervention, Bibulus tried to declare foul omens and therefore end the assembly prematurely, but he was chased off by armed supporters of Caesar and a bucket of sewage was thrown onto him as he rushed to his home to remain until the end of his term. The law passed without further delay, and thus was the First Triumvirate born: an alliance of three ambitious and savvy populists who would ultimately turn on each other. Caesar and Bibulus' Consulship was so one-sided that the Romans jokingly referred to the year 59 BCE as the Consulship of Julius and Caesar.

Caesar's father-in-law was elected as Consul during the next term, and it was lucky for Caesar because the Optimate Senators were thirsty for his blood. Instead of being confined to stewardship of a nearby uninhabited forest, Caesar's friends saw to it that he was appointed the governor of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, in northern Italy and just east of the Adriatic Sea. He was given command over four legions and was now prepared to fight his way out of his ever-increasing debt. He made war on some local tribes which had been arming themselves, and made some money from their spoils. His term as governor was made to be five years instead of the usual one, which was lucky because otherwise his debts would have made him a slave, and he would have faced prosecutions for his quasi-legal activities while serving as Consul.

His campaigns in Gaul led him all the way to Britain, which he invaded under the pretense that they had aided a local Gallic tribe against him, a shaky accusation against anyone other than the Britons, who were mostly Gauls themselves and very similar in culture. His first invasion didn't go well and he had to return to the mainland, but he succeeded following season, securing Roman-allied control over the southern portion of the island.

Meanwhile, back in Rome, Caesar's daughter Julia, whom he had married to Pompey to secure his alliance, died during childbirth in 54 BCE. He offered him his niece Octavia, but Pompey eventually refused. Crassus died the next year while trying to invade Parthia in the east. Pompey weighed his options carefully and chose to marry Cornelia, the daughter of Caesar's enemy Quintus Metellus Scipio. In 52 BCE, political violence in the city got so bad that Pompey was declared the sole Consul, an office very different from Dictator because a Consul is answerable for their actions in office while a Dictator is not. While in office, Pompey blocked an attempt by Caesar to serve as Consul in absentia, though this had been allowed in previous years. The Triumvirate was broken and the two men left would now fight over the real prize: Rome itself.

That same year, there was a massive rebellion in Gaul led by Vercingetorix, a charismatic and capable military leader who defeated the Roman legions on more than one occasion during the war. Eventually, the Gallic forces were defeated by superior technology through the extensive siegeworks in place at the Battle of Alesia and Vercingetorix was forced to surrender. I'd like to go into more detail here, but rest assured, there will be coverage of these battles in upcoming Military Mondays.

In 50 BCE, Pompey and the Senate ordered Caesar to lay down arms, disband his troops and return to Rome. Caesar believed that it was a trap; that Pompey, who had now joined his enemies, would lead the way in prosecuting Caesar for crimes real and fabricated. He was probably not far off, for at one point that year Pompey accused Caesar publicly of insubordination and treason. January 10, 49 BCE, Gaius Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with one legion and set off the Civil War. When many of the cities in northern Italy surrendered willingly to the invading legion, Pompey and his Senator allies abandoned Rome and sailed for Greece, taking with them every ship in the harbors of southern Italy. And so Caesar, being unable to chase his quarry, set off to challenge Pompey's lieutenants in Iberia, declaring, “I go to fight an army without a leader, so as later I may fight a leader without an army.”

He swept up the remains of forces loyal to Pompey and the Optimates in Iberia and made passage to Greece, where he would square off against his old ally and former son-in-law. At the Battle of Dyrrachium the next year, Pompey's army, which outnumbered Caesar's own legions at least 3 to 1, easily broke through Caesar's battle lines and his army routed. Caesar himself withdrew, and Pompey probably could have ended the entire war then and there, but his years of alliance with Caesar had taught him to be wary of this crafty populist. He feared a trap, and so did not pursue the enemy legions. Even Caesar remarked later that victory had belonged to his enemies, if only one of them would have claimed it.

His forces resupplied and fought the Battle of Pharsalus, in which they won an impressive and decisive victory for Caesar. The Optimates' power now broken, they fled in all directions, while Pompey sailed to Egypt where he believed he might find refuge. Instead he was assassinated, and his head presented to Caesar by Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII, who believed the gift would win him Caesar's favor. It worked in the opposite, however, and Caesar soon cast his support for Ptolemy's sister, Cleopatra VII, helping her to secure the throne of Egypt before he left. Caesar maintained a close relationship with Cleopatra, and there are historical rumors that they had a secret love child. He could have never married the Egyptian queen, however, as she was not a Roman citizen.

There was still work to be done, so Caesar granted immunity to many of his former enemy Senators, while mopping up the remnants of Pompey's forces, defeating all military opposition by 45 BCE. He had been elected Dictator in 48 and again in 47 BCE. In 46 he was appointed as Dictator for an unprecedented 10-year term, which undoubtedly led to his downfall two years later.

On the 15^th of March, 44 BCE, Caesar was attending a session of the Senate. A group of Senators had organized a conspiracy against this perpetual Dictator, calling themselves the Liberatores, or liberators. They lured Caesar into a false state of security by gathering around him to support a bill, and then proceeded to stab him repeatedly until he was dead. As many as 60 Senators participated in the assassination, and declared that Rome was now a free Republic once again.

Ultimately, Caesar's death did nothing to stem the tide of anti-Republican sentiment. In the old days of Rome, citizens were expected to be loyal to the State first, and many of the cautionary fables from the early years involve fathers ordering the executions of their own children if they betrayed the Republic. The shift from Republic to Empire was a gradual one, and as I said last week, Caesar is by no means the first ambitious Senator to have delusions of kingship. However, because the people had come to believe, generation after generation, that the Oligarchical Senators did not have their best interests at heart, they turned to Dictators and Emperors to right the wrongs that their own corrupt and bogged down bureaucracies had either created or failed to counteract. The fall of the Republic, and indeed Caesar's life as a whole, should send shivers down the spine of any government official, elected or otherwise, who fails to care for their citizens.

Pax vobiscum

Ancient Metallurgy

The manipulation of metal is one of the most important technological achievements of any civilization, whether ancient or modern. It's impact on both military and civilian life was so immense that entire periods of ancient history are named after the sorts of metals they were able to forge. The Bronze Age in Europe, for example, started in 2300 BCE and ended in 600 BCE. And the same way that modern advances often drive prices down for older technology, the Iron Age caused Bronze to become a more common, affordable commodity for soldier and farmer alike.

The ancient Europeans had many different methods for working metals long before the Romans added their own spice to the process. The earliest was probably hammering, where you just take two different malleable alloys and smash them together with a hammer until they've blended. Not the most efficient means, to be sure, but it was an effective, if time-consuming alternative to costlier methods involving furnaces and seals.

Provided you had a furnace, you could employ it to purify metals and weed out the slag, normally in preparation for working it. Smelting was commonly employed, a process where you seal the melting metal in a small container and separate the metal from the metal oxide. Before you smelted, however, you'd probably want to roast, which means almost literally barbecuing the metal over an open pit to eliminate the sulfur oxide before purifying the metal itself. After the metal has been melted and liberated of impurities, it would be cast into a mold where it would harden and become a plow, fork, helmet, or spearhead.

While the Romans certainly didn't create these and other primitive techniques, they built an empire upon the use of metals. Many of their early conquered lands were rich in metals of all sorts, and it wasn't long before captive slaves were sold to wealthy speculators who forced them to work the mines in Spain, Sicily, Britannia, and many other provinces. The mines were often dangerous, but it is interesting to note that the Romans appeared to have used a sort of hydraulic mining by utilizing their aqueducts and pushing water under some of the more metal-rich mountains especially in Spain. Just like with modern strip-mining, the result is almost offensive to behold.

Security of these mines was of top priority to the Roman government, whether Republican or Imperial. Many wars were fought over the resources they contained because the Romans knew that without a steady supply of metals, both precious and practical, the entire Empire would grind to a halt and even the city itself would be in danger. In fact, almost half of the time, they were fighting wars to ensure that they would be able to fight wars.

Pax vobiscum