The Later Roman Empire (Text Only) (Fontana History of the Ancient World) by Cameron Averil

Author:Cameron, Averil [Cameron, Averil]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780007391844
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

IX

Military Affairs, Barbarians and the Late Roman Army

THE ECONOMIC AND social changes which took place in the fourth century happened against a background of constant military conflict of one kind or another. Even though the reign of Diocletian and the tetrarchy brought a degree of respite from the troubled third century, it is hard to find a time during our period when the empire enjoyed a peace of any duration, and the extravagant claims of the panegyrists tend to represent devout wishes rather than actualities.

Thus in AD 321 the Latin panegyrist Nazarius wrote of the deep peace and prosperity which the empire then supposedly enjoyed, on the eve of renewed hostilities between Constantine and Licinius. While the poet Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius (V.l ff., XIV.9 ff.) and Eusebius (VC IV.7) claimed that all nations acknowledged the might of Constantine, new hostilities were breaking out between Rome and Sasanian Persia in Constantine’s last years, leaving to his son Constantius II a legacy of campaigning in Mesopotamia. The first years of Constantine’s reign had been spent leading a Roman army against Frankish tribes in Gaul, a period during which he built a bridge over the Rhine at Cologne to increase Roman prestige and deter further invasion (Anon. Vales. 8). Civil war was also going on more or less continuously during the years 306–13, and was renewed again by Constantine and Licinius in AD 316 before their final campaign in AD 324. The reign of Constantius continued the pattern: the war between Constantius and Magnentius from 350 to 353, besides distracting Constantius’s attention from the east, put the west in danger and weakened Roman defences on the Rhine; Ammianus speaks in his account of Julian’s campaigns in Gaul of forts and towns destroyed by barbarians (XVI.11, XVII.9–10), and the Alamanni had also penetrated across the Rhine and far into Gaul itself (XV.4).

A dangerous situation then arose: Silvanus, the general who had been put in charge of defeating the Alamanni and who was himself of Frankish origin, declared himself Augustus at Cologne (XV.5). Ammianus himself was among the officers who accompanied Ursicinus to put down the usurper, and says that he and his companions were so frightened for their own safety that they ‘were like condemned criminals thrown before fierce wild beasts’. His account of the whole affair and its aftermath well illustrates the interplay of barbarians and Romans, the divided loyalties and the opportunities to which they gave rise, and the atmosphere of suspicion at court and in the field. Cologne itself was now besieged and taken by barbarians, and the job of remedying the situation in Gaul was given to the inexperienced Julian (XV.8), whose campaigns are described in detail by Ammianus. Julian proved to be a talented general, recovering Cologne and defeating a large Alamannic army in a pitched battle near Strasbourg in AD 357 (Ammianus, XVI.12), after which he crossed the Rhine, and subsequently attacked the Franks, who were occupying Roman territory (XVII.1–2, 8–10).

The campaigns in Gaul, though told by Ammianus

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