PART TWO
Augustus, Tiberius and Germanicus
In 4 AD Augustus chose Tiberius as his successor, adopted him and forced him in turn to adopt his nephew Germanicus, who became second in the dynastic line.
In 8 AD Tiberius faced a series of rebellions in Dalmatia and Pannonia caused by dishonest governors, then was sent to Germany to quell the revolts of the Cherusci and Marcomanni, defeating them and capturing their leader Batone.
Despite that success, Augustus decided to call Tiberius back to Rome, and replaced him with Publius Varus, an ambitious and self-confident general who dreamed of repeating Caesar's exploits in Gaul in Germany.
Varus recklessly trusted the barbarian Arminius, the leader of the Germanic tribe of the Cherusci who already commanded a unit of auxiliary troops with Tiberius, and had obtained Roman citizenship.
Despite having been warned by Arminius' father-in-law, in September of year 9 AD Varo ventured beyond the Rhine as if it were a pacified territory only to fall into the tragic ambush of the Battle of Teutoburg.
Arminius pretended to go ahead, preceeding the bulk of the Roman army, but instead at his command the united Germanic tribes annihilated three Roman legions in a carnage that lasted several days, and captured their banners; Varo took his own life so as not to fall prisoner.
It was a devastating defeat, a new "Clades Lollia", which endangered the empire, proving that the Romans were not invincible. It was feared that the Germanic tribes would invade Gaul and even reach Rome.
Augustus took action and sent again Tiberius to Germany in 9 AD, where he stayed until 12 AD. He resumed the previous strategy, avoiding major battles, and preferred to conduct a guerrilla war of attrition with short and limited raids, aimed at destroying the crops and villages of the Germanic tribes, putting them in trouble. And above all he always remained on guard, without trusting anyone.
Augustus, however, had not abandoned the idea of a Germania Magna extending as far as the Elba river, and not sharing Tiberius' prudent policy he placed alongside him his nephew Germanicus (son of his brother Drusus), who was an ambitious and charismatic man, in search of glory.
In 14 AD upon the death of Augustus Tiberius became emperor and went back to Rome; Germanicus, however, remained in Germany and in the following year decided to cross the Rhine with eight legions to face Arminius, who set an ambush for him in the forest; he escaped at the last moment, narrowly avoiding a second Teutoburg.
Not satisfied, he tried again in 16 AD, preparing a river fleet of a thousand ships to transport troops and supplies along the river, a fleet which was destroyed shortly afterwards by a storm.
Germanicus managed to defeat Arminius on two different occasions: the first at Idistaviso, the second in front of the Angrivarian Wall, near the Weser river. To avenge the massacre of Teutoburg he took no prisoners, and celebrated the triumph in Rome in 17 AD. displaying Arminius' wife Tusnelda and their son Tumelicus as trophies.
However, those were not decisive or definitive victories, and the situation remained the same. Being an experienced general, veteran of endless wars, Tiberius knew that a military victory once a year was not enough to dominate a region.
Large expeditions like those of Germanicus were risky, and Germany was a poor region that could not yield spoils that would justify the enormous expenses.
Balancing costs and benefits, Tiberius decided to call Germanicus back to Rome by apppointing him senator. The Roman army was withdrawn to safer positions, fortifying the border on the Rhine with a series of forts and a large castrum in Bonna (now Bonn). Thus the Augustan project of Germania Magna ended, and in 17 AD the two provinces of Germania Superior and Inferior were established.
The Germanic tribes were aggressive and always fighting among themselves; they united only in times of danger, to face a common enemy. As hoped by Tiberius – according to the classic "divide and rule" – in times of peace the various tribes began to quarrel again, and their leader Arminius was killed by one of his men between 19 and 21 AD.
Germanicus fell ill and after long suffering died in 19 AD in Antioch; it was suspected that he had been poisoned by Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Tiberius's trusted man who had been alongside him. Tiberius did not attend his funeral.
Ancient sources such as Suetonius and Tacitus describe Tiberius with open antipathy and prejudice: a distrustful, introverted and shy man, who did nothing to please the people and indeed preached the ancient Roman virtues of discipline and duty. He also shied away from the spectacular and propagandistic aspects of imperial ceremonial.
He is better known for his cruelty than for his merits as a good general and administrator, who was able to consolidate the principality created by Augustus.
Legends spread about his depraved and vicious life in Capri, the first case in the imperial era of an accusation that would be used in the following centuries to demonize emperors or characters disliked by the aristocracy and the Roman system of power, such as Nero, Heliogabalus and Caracalla. The historians insinuated that he and his mother Livia had plotted to eliminate all other possible successors of Augustus.
Germanicus was instead glorified beyond measure by those same historians, who considered him an emulator of Alexander the Great, to whom he seems to have compared himself in a speech given in Alexandria in Egypt.
He was a good-looking, charismatic and ambitious man; Tacitus wrote that if he had been left free to act he would have conquered all of Germany.
This dualism probably reflects the contrast between Tiberius and the senators because while formally respecting the authority of the Senate, Tiberius concentrated decision-making power in his hands, since in that transition period between the republic and the empire a single centralized authority was needed.
He had no illusions about human nature, and was convinced that institutions and laws should contain the ambitions of individuals.