SOURCE: Syme, Ronald. “Tacitus on Gaul.” In Ten Studies in Tacitus, pp. 19-29. London: Clarendon Press, 1970.

[In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1952, Syme discusses Tacitus's treatment of the problems posed to Rome by Gaul.]

Tacitus on Gaul. The title seems paradoxical, for the name of the historian of imperial Rome is linked for ever with a small work he composed concerning the land of Germany, its tribes and their habits.

The Germania is a precious opuscule. It is unique—yet it is not original. The Germania of Tacitus belongs to a recognizable type, the ethnographical excursus or essay, and it had models and precursors. As one would expect, the Germania exhibits various defects of the genre, especially the use of conventional and inherited motifs. Furthermore, not all of the historical information is up to date. It looks as though Tacitus recorded what he had read in books, not what he had seen and observed. It seems pretty clear that he followed his source very closely, not adding many details.

Much has been written about the Germania of Tacitus, perhaps too much. It has appealed to students of literature, and to historians, to researchers in European origins, to patriots and to politicians. It may be a change and a relief to turn instead and enquire what Tacitus has to say about Gaul. Something may emerge about the history of Imperial Rome, about the historian himself—his art, his methods, his predilections.

It is often alleged that Tacitus' acquaintance with the Roman world was narrow and imperfect: he knew little, and he cared little, about the provinces. Some critics have even taken him to task quite sharply. Tacitus, they say, would have been a better man, and a better historian, if he had gone more widely about the lands of the Empire. Travel would enlarge a man's sympathies, it would diminish his pessimism, and take him out of the miasma of metropolitan corruption into the pure atmosphere of provincial morality.

Such opinions are hasty and superficial. They depend upon deductions from the writings of the historian, especially from the Annales, the story of the Caesars from Tiberius to Nero.¹ And, at first sight, that work seems narrow in scope, being concentrated mainly upon Rome, the emperors and the Senate. However, let it be recalled that Tacitus is a political historian. Rome is the seat and centre of the imperial government, and Tacitus' central theme is the relations between the Caesars and the senatorial aristocracy.

The provinces hardly seem to come into his narrative. Spain does not attract the author of the Annales, there is little about the Danubian provinces, the Balkan lands, or inner Anatolia.

And why should there be? In normal times the provinces are almost wholly devoid of identity, for the true units throughout the territories of the Empire are tribes or towns. It is not to be expected or tolerated that a Roman historian should compose tribal, local, or municipal history.

For long years in the long imperial peace, most regions are devoid of incident or notoriety. Spain was a vast area, embracing three provinces. In the past it had bulked largely in the wars of Rome, foreign or civil, from the days of the Scipiones down to the final pacification under Caesar Augustus. Yet Spain contributes nothing to the Annales (so far as preserved) except the assassination of one governor and the prolonged absence of another.²

Towns and tribes and provinces lead a quiet indescribable existence, remote from history. When civil war comes, they enter the orbit of great events, their power and resources will turn the scale. As a form of government, the Principate itself took its origin in the provinces, and the imperatores implanted at Rome the absolute power that they had exerted abroad. There was a great secret of empire, ‘arcanum imperii’, says Tacitus, referring to the civil wars after the fall of Nero: an emperor did not have to be made at Rome.³ But, surely, it was not a secret. It had been anxiously covered up, but everybody knew the dangerous truth.

The provinces, it is agreed, are not prominent in the Annales. A vital fact, however, has been omitted. The Annales as we have them are incomplete. The work breaks off in Book xvi, in the course of the year 66. That was not the end determined by the historian. His plan can be conjectured—and why should he not have lived to complete it? A work of eighteen books in three groups of six. Namely, six for Tiberius Caesar, six for Claudius and Caligula, and six for Nero.

Nor is it idle to add a further conjecture about the missing conclusion of the Annales. What were the main subjects treated in Book xvii and in Book xviii? The answer is clear. First, Book xvii: the tour in Greece organized by the emperor who was devoted to all things Greek, and to every kind of display and pageantry. Also the insurrection of the Jews. Second, Book xviii: the risings in the western provinces, the fall of Nero and the catastrophe of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (a.d. 68).

The first move against Nero came from one of the Gallic provinces. Julius Vindex, the governor of Lugdunensis, raised a rebellion but was defeated in battle by Verginius Rufus, commander of the army of Upper Germany. Rufus stood loyal by Nero, but Nero lacked spirit and energy.

Vindex the insurgent had tried to induce other governors to join the revolt. Only one of them would listen to him. It was Sulpicius Galba, the legate of Hispania Tarraconensis; and, although Galba's position seemed hopeless after the defeat of his ally Vindex, Nero also gave up hope, and through a chain of accidents and misunderstandings Galba became emperor after all.

Such, in brief, would be the climax of the Annales. Tacitus as a writer is not only a master of style and colour, of movement and drama. He has a supreme gift for arrangement and architectonics. He sees the field in front of him and knows how to prepare his effects in advance. The rising of Julius Vindex is not merely the initial action that provokes the overthrow of Nero: it is a climax and turning-point in the relations between the Roman government and the peoples of Tres Galliae.

There was a Gallic problem in the early Principate, and Tacitus was well aware of it. What was its nature?

The Gaul which Julius Caesar had invaded, crushed, and conquered remained tranquil on the whole. Yet the Roman government was vigilant and distrustful. The land was large and populous, with an old tradition of martial glory. The Gauls were a collection of tribes, not a nation; yet the resistance to Julius Caesar had called forth a national spirit. It might still be very dangerous.

The invasions of Germany in the time of Caesar Augustus helped to support Roman rule in Gaul. Rome could claim to be the protector of the Gauls, their ally in a war which for the Gauls (who remembered Ariovistus and others) was a war of revenge. The chieftains of Gaul and the levies of Gaul marched with the Roman legions into Germany (and perhaps did much of the fighting).

But the conquest of Germany had been abandoned. The revolt of Arminius and the loss of three legions was a sharp lesson to the Roman government—and might be an incitement to the peoples of Gaul. How was the Roman government to deal with the problem?

No legions were stationed in the interior of Gaul. At first sight a sign of confidence. In truth, there was a strategic reason. Eight legions stood along the Rhine, from Vetera (Xanten) to Vindonissa (Windisch, near Bâle). They seem to face Germany, to repel attack or to resume the conquest of that country. But they can face both ways—Gaul as well as Germany.⁴ That indeed is the special function of two of the four legions in the Upper German command, those at Argentorate (Strasbourg) and Vindonissa. There were hardly any Germans in Baden and in the Schwarzwald. No: the legion at Strasbourg is ready for war—but not against Germans. The legion will march by Saverne on Metz and Reims. As for the other legion, from Bâle it is a short step, by the Gap of Belfort between Vosges and Jura to Besançon and then to Dijon, at the strategic centre of the whole country. Any Gallic insurrection will be crushed with promptitude.

Gaul under the early Empire remained very much as it had been before. Though men come down from the old oppida, and cities are founded in the plain (thus among the Aedui the new town Augustodunum takes the place of Bibracte), though the cities themselves prosper, though commerce flourishes and education spreads, the social structure subsists. Gaul is still rural rather than urban, feudal rather than municipal. It is a land of tribes and tribal chieftains, of large estates, country houses—and much of the population in serfdom or close to it. In short, a medieval stage of civilization: the manorhouse and the village.

The evidence provided by Caesar in the Bellum Gallicum can be regarded as still valid. Caesar shows perfect examples of the Gallic baron. First, Orgetorix of the Helvetii—‘longe nobilissimus fuit et ditissimus’.⁵ This man had an establishment, a familia, of ten thousand men. And in addition, a large number of ‘clientes obaeratique’.⁶ With the help of these retainers and dependants, Orgetorix was able to do as he pleased and to baffle the process of justice among the Helvetii.

Second, the Aeduan chieftain Dumnorix, the friend and ally of Orgetorix. The facts about Dumnorix are the classic text for dynastic marriages among the principes of Gaul.⁷ Dumnorix had extended his power far and wide, and he had not confined his operations to taking a wife from among the Helvetii, the daughter of Orgetorix. He had made his mother marry a ‘homo nobilissimus ac potentissimus’ among the Bituriges; and he had used his half-sister and his female relatives to contract matrimonial alliances in other tribes.

By contrast, the old provincia, Gallia Narbonensis, which is organized on the municipal system. The population was mixed in origin, and perhaps not Celtic by predominance; hardly any of the tribes (except the Allobroges) had a national memory of wars against the Romans; by climate and products it was a Mediterranean region; there was a tendency to live in towns; and, Roman civilization supervening upon the Hellenic, the provincia might have grown and developed upon the Italian model even if there had been no colonies established there of Roman veterans.

‘Italia verius quam provincia.’ So was Narbonensis designated.⁸ Facts confirm the phrase. The inhabitants of the Narbonensian province are recruited for the Roman legions, and even, at an early date, for the Praetorian Guard—but they are hardly ever found in the auxiliary regiments. The young men of the municipal aristocracies enter the imperial service as officers in the legions (tribuni militum) and go on to financial posts as procuratores Augusti. And, the next stage, these families produce Roman senators.⁹ A number are attested in the early Empire. The first consul from the western provinces was Cornelius Balbus in 40 b.c., a man from Gades in Spain: a portentous and isolated phenomenon of the revolutionary age. The second comes in the reign of Tiberius Caesar in a.d. 35—Valerius Asiaticus from Vienna (which had once been a tribal capital, the city of the Allobroges).¹⁰

Narbonensis, therefore, belongs with the civilized parts of Spain—and with that zone of northern Italy that can be described as ‘provincia verius quam Italia’, namely Italia Transpadana. Climate, history, organization, and administration, everything separates Narbonensis from Tres Galliae.

To return, therefore, to Gaul properly so called. The natives are not normally permitted to serve in the Roman legions, but only in auxiliary formations;¹¹ and the chieftains command tribal regiments, but only seldom occupy the position of tribunus militum in the Roman legions or find employment as procuratores in the service of the Roman government.¹² And, being tribal chieftains, the Gallic principes, despite their wealth and education, cannot expect to have access to the governing class of Rome, like the families from the coloniae et municipia of Narbonensis or Spain.

The facts about the social structure of Tres Galliae are plain and patent. On the one hand, the chieftains, of old dynastic families, great owners of property; on the other, a large population, tenants or even serfs. Clearly not a region that could be readily amalgamated with the regions of town governments—Italy, Narbonensis, and the more civilized parts of Spain.

What then was to be the destiny of Gaul? An important part of the Roman Empire, rich and populous, yet not integrated with the more vital parts and not contributing to the imperial administrative class. And Gaul might also prove troublesome.

Trouble might originate either among the barons or among the depressed class. Like their ancestors, the Gallic nobles were proud and bellicose, rejoicing in splendour and display. Hence quarrels, extravagance, and debts. Their pride would be injured by subjection to the Roman rule—and they might envy the opportunities of the Narbonensians, who had admittance to the Roman governing class. And they resented the burden of Roman taxation.

Such were the grievances of the rich. Discontent among the country population threatened a social revolution that would easily and perhaps inevitably take the form of a national rising against foreign rule. And nationalism might be fanned by superstition.

There were Druids—but what are Druids precisely? The old priestly and aristocratic class of Druids known from Caesar seems to have faded out.¹³ Why was this? Presumably because the nobles had quickly abandoned the traditional education, turning with eagerness to the dominant language and culture of the civilized world. When that happened, the old religious and magical beliefs sank into the lower classes and retained their potency there. If the name of the Druids survived, it now adhered to village sorcerers and rural magicians.

Druidic practices, we are informed, were officially proscribed by the Roman government in the time of Tiberius Caesar.¹⁴ For what reason? Was it the abominable rite of human sacrifices? Perhaps. Yet it is not at all likely that the ritual was still being carried out in Gaul.¹⁵ The belief in witchcraft, however, still kept much of its strength. And witchcraft might not always be harmless. It might operate as a subversive and revolutionary force among the credulous and fanatical population of the countryside, and, working upon social discontent, lend fuel to a nationalist insurrection against the Roman rule.¹⁶

The danger that Gaul presented to the Roman government now becomes clearer. It arose precisely from the social structure. A discontented noble would have allies among his own class and kin—but he could also gather a large following of clients and serfs among the depressed country population.

Such in brief is the Gallic problem. Tacitus in the Annales expounds it in three episodes concerning the principes of Tres Galliae.

The first episode belongs to the year 21.¹⁷ It is an insurrection. Two chieftains started it, Julius Florus among the Treveri, Julius Sacrovir among the Aedui. The historian provides a full and detailed account—how the two principes formed the plot, and gathered great hosts of followers. Among the Aedui Sacrovir had forty thousand men at his back, but this was not an army, only a vast multitude, few of whom were properly equipped with weapons.

The Roman legions on the Rhine intervened, and the revolt was crushed. Not, however, before it had caused great alarm at Rome. It was even believed that all the tribes of Gaul had risen.

Next, the second episode, in the year 48. Not in Gaul but in Rome, and in the Senate House. And the sharpest possible contrast. The Emperor Claudius admits to senatorial rank a number of the principes of Tres Galliae, and he explains and justifies his policy by an oration to the high assembly.

The speech is extant, almost complete. It is preserved on a bronze tablet at Lugdunum.¹⁸ One of the most precious of all historical documents, it carries the authentic language of Claudius Caesar and reveals not a little of his psychology.

Yet the oration is not altogether satisfactory as an exposition of imperial policy. Remorseless in erudition and in pedantry, Claudius insists on delivering a long lecture on early Roman and Etruscan history; and when he comes to the point, certain of his central arguments are hasty, superficial, and fallacious.

Tacitus shows more skill and insight. He proceeds in two ways.¹⁹ First, he invents a speech in reported discourse, giving the arguments employed against Claudius Caesar in private by the members of his Council. And, a remarkable feature, those arguments are trivial and emotional. They appeal to national prejudice and ancient history. The Gauls, exclaim the counsellors of Claudius, are foreigners, and nothing less than the hereditary enemies of the Roman People. Why, their ancestors captured the city of Rome.

Second, Tacitus produces an improved version of the Oratio Claudi Caesaris. He purges and prunes the imperial discourse, he strengthens and ennobles it. The argument acquires proportion, coherence, and power.

The third episode produces another surprise. Twenty years after Claudius had brought Gallic chieftains into the Roman Senate, Julius Vindex rose in revolt against Nero. Julius Vindex was not only a Roman senator and governor of one of the Gallic provinces—he was a Gaul himself, a descendant of kings in Aquitania.²⁰

There has been much debate about the rising of Julius Vindex. Was it a move to dethrone a tyrant—or was it a native insurrection against the Roman rule?

What impelled Vindex in the first instance will never be known. Perhaps some small incident or personal motive. However, whatever the cause, whatever the programme announced by Vindex in his revolt against Nero, that revolt quickly took the form of a native insurrection. Other chieftains joined him, and he acquired a host of followers, a hundred thousand, it is said.²¹ But this too was not a regular army. The fate of Florus and Sacrovir was re-enacted. The Rhine legions duly marched against him, and Vindex was defeated at Vesontio (Besançon).

The rising of Julius Vindex led to the fall of Nero. It had another result. It seemed to demonstrate that a Roman senator from Gaul was still a Gallic baron. It was Claudius who argued that such men would be useful members of the Roman Senate. What happened now seemed to refute and condemn the Emperor—and justify the opposition of his counsellors.

The lesson was not lost. In the next age there can have been very few Roman senators from Tres Galliae. Instead, the Emperors continue to recruit the governing class from Spain and Narbonensis. The process spreads quickly to Africa and to the Greek East. Men from the cities of Asia become senators, and Galatians, of Celtic ancestry, the descendants of kings and tetrarchs.²² But Gaul is missing.

To return to Cornelius Tacitus. He skilfully causes the Gallic problem to unfold in three episodes—Florus and Sacrovir, the Emperor Claudius, and Vindex. Taken altogether, those three episodes permit and encourage three deductions.

First, he has precise knowledge about Gaul. Note, for example, in the account of Florus and Sacrovir the phrase ‘obaerati et clientes’ or the detail about Augustodunum, the city of the Aedui—it was a centre of polite studies for the aristocratic youth of Gaul.²³

Second, Gaul has captured his interest. He gives a very full account of Florus and Sacrovir. Other writers might not have followed this procedure.²⁴ Above all, Tacitus is the only author to mention the admission of the Gallic chieftains by Claudius Caesar. There is not a word about it in Suetonius, Seneca, or Cassius Dio.²⁵

Third, his sympathy. Tacitus has no high opinion of the Emperor Claudius. Yet he is clearly on the side of the Emperor against his counsellors. Claudius' speech is noble and sensible, whereas the arguments of the objectors are prejudiced and ridiculous.

This is encouraging. We seem to be on the way towards making an important discovery about Tacitus as a man and a historian. How is this combination of knowledge, insight, and sympathy to be explained?

Now it is a common opinion, as has been stated above, that Tacitus was not much interested in the Roman provinces. That opinion appears groundless. Those who criticize Tacitus have not always taken into account the official career of a Roman senator. Tacitus might easily have acquired personal knowledge of Gaul and the Rhineland.

First, in the earliest stage of the cursus honorum. The aspirant to senatorial honours normally spends a season as military tribune in a Roman legion. Tacitus was born about a.d. 56: his military service, falling about the year 76, might have been passed on the Rhine.

Second, most senators who wish to reach the consulate hold the command of a legion not long after their praetorship. Tacitus was praetor in 88, consul in 97.²⁶ Shortly after his praetorship, so he states in the Agricola, he was absent from Rome for the space of four years.²⁷ Perhaps as legatus legionis somewhere. Let us not be deterred by the pronouncement of Theodor Mommsen who described Tacitus as ‘the most unmilitary of historians’.

So far his official career. Some have supposed that Tacitus when abroad in the period 89-93 was governor of Gallia Belgica. That post in a senatorial cursus falls, not after a man's praetorship, but just before his consulate. That is to say, it would have to be in the period 93-6 or 94-7.²⁸

And now, to conclude. There is something else. Where was Tacitus born? A precious detail about his parentage is preserved by the Elder Pliny in his Naturalis Historia. He states that he knew a Roman knight called Cornelius Tacitus who was imperial procurator of Gallia Belgica.²⁹ When was that? Perhaps in the period 55-8 about the time of Tacitus' birth. Pliny spent a large part of the period 47-58 in three officer positions, each of them with the armies of the Rhine.³⁰

The procurator of Belgica was an important person. Upper and Lower Germany were included in his province, and he was thus paymaster-general for the armies of the Rhine. Officials generally had their wives with them. The future historian of Rome and the Empire may have seen the light of day in some city of Belgica or the Rhineland—Trèves, Reims, or Cologne.³¹

But the place where a man happens to be born is a mere accident. It is not his patria.³² Where is the city of origin of the Cornelii Taciti? Not perhaps in Italy, but somewhere in the provinces of the Roman West. Could it be one of the cities of Narbonensis? But that subject would demand another investigation.

Notes

1. The present argument will therefore be confined to the Annales.

2. Ann. iv. 25 (L. Piso); vi. 27. 3 (L. Arruntius).

3. Hist. i. 4. 2: ‘evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri’.

4. Ann. iv. 5. 1: ‘sed praecipuum robur Rhenum iuxta, commune in Germanos Gallosque subsidium, octo legiones erant’.

5. BG i. 2. 1.

6. BG i. 4. 2: ‘Orgetorix ad iudicium omnem suam familiam ad hominum milia decem undique coegit et omnis clientis obaeratosque suos, quorum magnum numerum habebat, eodem conduxit: per eos ne causam diceret se eripuit’.

7. BG i. 7. 3 ff.

8. Pliny, NH iii. 31: ‘agrorum cultu, virorum morumque dignatione, amplitudine opum nulli provinciarum postferenda breviterque Italia verius quam provincia’.

9. The prime example is the family of Julius Agricola—‘utrumque avum procuratorem Caesarum habuit, quae equestris nobilitas est’ (Agr. 4. 1).

10. As recently revealed by a fragment of the Fasti Ostienses, Inscr. It. xiii. 1, p. 188.

11. The total of Gallic legionaries discoverable in the first century of the Empire does not reach even a dozen. A single group of eight in III Augusta in Africa, of the Flavian period, furnishes almost all the evidence (Inscr. lat. de l'Algérie 3115, 3116, 3117, 3118, 3120, 3125, 3535 [Theveste]; Inscr. lat. de l'Afrique 152 [Ammaedara]).

12. The notable exception is C. Julius Alpinus Classicianus, appointed procurator of Britain at the time of Boudicca's rebellion, cf. Ann. xiv. 38. 4, and the inscription at London, CIL vii. 30 + AE 1936, 3. His wife is called ‘Iulia Indi filia Pacata I[ndiana]’, presumably daughter of the Treveran noble Julius Indus, who was loyal to Rome at the time of the rising of Florus and Sacrovir (Ann. iii. 42. 3).

13. The class is represented by Diviciacus the Aeduan, with whom Cicero had converse (De Div. i. 90).

14. Pliny, NH xxx. 13: ‘Gallias utique possedit, et quidem ad nostram memoriam. namque Tiberii Caesaris principatus sustulit Druidas eorum et hoc genus vatum medicorumque’. The statement is precious. Pliny, born in 23 or 24, had lengthy equestrian service on the Rhine (for a large part of the period 47-58), and was later procurator of Gallia Belgica, so it appears, about 74 or 75 (cf. NH xviii. 183). Pliny also reports the Druidic superstition that proved fatal to a Roman knight (from the Vocontii in Narbonensis) under Claudius (NH xxix. 54). Suetonius, who assigns to Claudius the abolition of Druidism (Divus Claudius 25. 5), cannot compete.

15. Human sacrifices had been suppressed by the Romans, according to Strabo the geographer (iv, p. 198). Strabo's testimony is valid for a much earlier period than the latest dated incidents in his work (a.d. 18 and 19) might appear to indicate. Pomponius Mela (iii. 18) refers to an innocuous vestigial remnant: ‘manent vestigia feritatis iam abolitae, atque ut ab ultimis caedibus temperant, ita nihilominus, ubi devotos altaribus admovere, delibant’. This author was writing precisely in the year 43 (cf. iii. 49). But there is no sign that he is referring to a contemporary or recent cessation of ritual murders.

16. The abject superstition of the rural population among the Aedui is shown by the episode of Mariccus in 69. This person claimed to be a god and gathered about him a ‘fanatica multitudo’ of eight thousand followers (Hist. Ii. 61). In the next year Druids emerged, and, encouraged by the burning of the Capitol, announced the imminent fall of the Roman power, so Tacitus affirms (Hist. iv. 54. 2). The testimony of a Roman consular ought not to be ignored or discarded.

17. Ann. iii. 40 ff.

18. ILS 212.

19. Ann. xi. 23 f.

20. Cassius Dio lxiii. 22. 1. His father had been a senator, presumably one of those admitted by Claudius in the year 48.

21. Josephus, BJ iv. 440: ἅμα τοĩς δυνατοι̑ς τω̑ν επιχωρίων. Plutarch (Galba 8) gives the total of a hundred thousand followers.

22. As C. Julius Severus is styled (OGIS 544: Ancyra).

23. Ann. iii. 43. 1: ‘nobilissimam Galliarum subolem, liberalibus studiis ibi operatam’. Notice also how Tacitus in his version of the speech of Claudius emphasizes the cultural contribution of the Gauls: ‘iam moribus artibus adfinitatibus nostris mixti’ (Ann. xi. 24. 4).

24. The only other record is the brief allusion in Velleius Paterculus Ii. 129. 5.

25. The history of Dio is fragmentary, it is true, but Suetonius devotes a chapter to the acts of the censorship (Divus Claudius 16). Seneca emphasizes and derides Claudius' lavish grants of the Roman citizenship (Apocol. 3. 3).

26. For the date of his praetorship, Ann. xi. 11. 1.

27. Agr. 45. 5.

28. At that time Belgica was being governed by Glitius Agricola, who passed to the consulate in 97 (ILS 1021: Augusta Taurinorum).

29. NH vii. 76.

30. As emerges from various passages in the Naturalis Historia. Cf. also his nephew's statement (Epp. iii. 5. 4), and the phalera found at Vetera, CIL xiii. 10026²²: ‘Plinio praefec(to)’.

31. Tacitus records under the year 58 a peculiar conflagration in the territory of Cologne (Ann. xiii. 57. 3). Notice also the sympathetic treatment of that community in his narrative of the year 70 (Hist. iv. 65).

32. Thus the Emperor Hadrian was born at Rome, but Italica in Baetica was his ‘patria’ (HA, Hadr. i. 3; 2. 1).