This is part of a larger project I am working on. These are just raw reactions to the text as I read it. For the final discussion, check out my Substack.
Tacitus’ Annals is a powerful work that starts from the beginning with an incisive edge. Tacitus was not a fan of the empire, especially as Roman elites had often governed it. The work is broken up by the reign’s of the various emperors he explores, but they are not biographies, just chronological divisions. The surviving work is broken up into three sections exploring the reign’s of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero. Tacitus’ exploration of Caligula’s time as emperor no longer exists, as far as is know.
Tiberius became the second leader of the Roman Principate, following the death of his step-father, Augustus. It was a perilous time in that Augustus had ruled as emperor for more than forty years and the empire had never dealt with an imperial succession before. The old republic was dead, killed by decades of civil wars. In those conflicts, the Roman army had been essential in making and breaking leaders, would that tradition continue? Was Rome in store for more decades of fratricidal conflict?
Tiberius acted quickly. He stared in Rome itself, neutralizing any political dissent in what was left of the Roman senate and bought off who he needed to to quell opposition there. The army stationed in Illyricum (modern Slovenia and Croatia), briefly mutinied and this was concerning because it was the closest major concentration of Roman soldiers to the capital. However, an eclipse and the superstition of the soldiers provided a fortuitus relief for Tiberius.
More concerning was the Rhine frontier between Roman Gaul (France) and Germany. The largest armies in the empire were there keeping the Germans on the eastern side of the Rhine. If they marched on Rome, or just let the Germans pass, Tiberius would have big problems. The soldiers there had a long list of grievances. Many had served throughout the civil wars and kept in the ranks because of their needed skills. They also had not received a pay raise since the start of those conflicts, and while that had not been a problem during them, because of the chance for booty and profit, now they lived a more sedentary life policing the frontier.
Fortunately for Tiberius, his nephew, Germanicus, was on location and largely helped quelle the mutiny. The Germans also provided an unintended assist when they prepared for a new attack on the Roman positions, hearing that they might be undefended or only scantily patrolled. The Romans fended off the attacks, then launched their own reprisal campaign overland through the Black Forest, where they avenged the defeat of three legions that had been ambushed years earlier.
However, Germanicus noticed that a major problem with forays into Germany was his need to defend a long supply line back to his Rhine bases. For his next campaign, he ordered the construction of transport ships and sailed from the modern Netherlands, making amphibius landings as far as the Weser River, pushing the Germans all the way back to the Elbe, deep into German territory. Germanicus wanted permission to follow up these attacks and prepare permanent Roman positions, but Tiberius denied him and ordered him back to the western side of the Rhine.
In his will, Augustus supposedly advised Tiberius not to try and expand the empire, echoing the advice of Pericles in some ways, nearly five hundred years earlier. The logic went that the empire was quite large as is and that adding to it would only increase its instability. Rome had made a lot of enemies and, if it started to show weakness, it would be pounced upon.
However, there may have also been more of a domestic concern. Since the time of Sulla and Marius, successful generals had gained inordinate political influence that spilled over into domestic politics. Germanicus was a popular, young, dynamic leader, well liked by the army. If he was too successful in his military campaigns, then he or the army might consider him for political ones. Accordingly, not only did Claudius order Germanicus back to the Rhine, he ordered him first back to Rome to receive some rewards but then on to the eastern Mediterranean where he had far less personal connections with the army.
Trouble had been brewing there for some time as the new king of the Parthian empire, educated in Rome, fought domestic allegations that he was too partial to the Parthian’s old Italian enemies. At the same time, in Armenia, a smaller but critical power in eastern Anatolia, was undergoing its own succession dispute. Traditionally, Rome and Parthia mutually agreed to who would lead Armenia in order to keep it a neutral power out of each others hands and preserve the balance of power in the Roman east and Parthian west. However, with Rome distracted by Tiberius’ ascension, Parthia had tried to sneak their preferred candidate onto the throne. Germanicus arrived and stabilized the situation through negotiation, but the whole affair highlighted the extent to which Rome had to manage its external threats, not just dictate terms. She was powerful but not all powerful.
Similarly, the situation Germanicus had caused in Germany allowed his cousin Drusus, the son of Tiberius, to play off more eastern Germans against the western Germans Germanicus had attacked. From his base in Illyricum, along the Danube in modern Austria, he encouraged a Roman-friendly German faction to contest anti-Roman Germans for more power. This was Rome’s primary method to control the frontier at this point: play various factions off against each other and keep the threat level as low as possible.
Unlike Augustus, Tiberius did little to prepare for his own succession. Germanicus and Drusus both predeceased him and he became sullen and removed after that. He eventually made a half-hearted effort to arrange for Germanicus’ son, Caligula, to become emperor. That lack of effort was unfortunate because it may have revealed Caligula’s foibles. He was hailed at first by the army, having essentially been the Roman army along the Rhine’s mascot in his youth while there with his father, but he quickly descended into debauchery and his reign into madness. Tiberius’ inability to let anyone else really share the spotlight, out of concern for his own position, highlights just one of the problems of one-man rule and set the Roman empire along a dark path.
If you’re interested in the final discussion of the book, check out my Substack.
The History Doctor 
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