The Great Illyrian Revolt Read online

  The Great Illyrian Revolt

  Rome’s Forgotten War in the Balkans, AD 6–9

  Jason R. Abdale

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

  Pen & Sword Military

  An imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  Yorkshire – Philadelphia

  Copyright © Jason R Abdale 2019

  ISBN 978 1 52671 817 4

  eISBN 978 1 52671 819 8

  Mobi ISBN 978 1 52671 818 1

  The right of Jason R Abdale to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  Contents

  Chronology of Events

  Introduction

  Chapter OneThe Illyrians

  Chapter Two Rome and the Balkans

  Chapter Three Outbreak

  Chapter Four The Tide Turns

  Chapter Five A Long Hard Slog

  Chapter Six The End of the Road

  Chapter Seven The Aftermath

  Epilogue

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Chronology of Events

  Approx. 6,000 BC: The earliest recognizable culture within the western Balkans appears.

  Approx. 4,500 BC: People living in the western Balkans begin mining, smelting and making objects from copper.

  Approx. 1,000 BC: Iron use spreads to the western Balkans. At the same time, the first culture that can be described as ‘proto-Illyrian’ appears within the region, possibly due to an immigration of Indo-European speakers from Anatolia.

  1,000–500 BC?: A group of three Illyrian tribes collectively known as the Iapygians crosses the Adriatic Sea and settles within south-eastern Italy in what is now the region of Apulia.

  734 BC: The Greeks expel the Liburnian tribe from the island of Corfu (known then as Corcyra). This is the first recorded conflict between the Illyrians and the ancient Greeks.

  691 BC: The first war between the Illyrians and the kingdom of Macedon. These two peoples would continue to fight each other for the next 300 years.

  400–300 BC?: The Iapygians of south-eastern Italy are either conquered or driven out by the expanding Roman Republic.

  393 BC: The Dardanian tribe conquers Macedon, and holds it for only one year before being expelled.

  229–228 BC: The First Roman-Illyrian War. The first time in the historic record when we know that Romans and Illyrians fought each other.

  220–219 BC: The Second Roman-Illyrian War.

  169 BC: The Third Roman-Illyrian War.

  167 BC: Southern Illyria becomes a Roman protectorate. Although nominally independent, it is under the domination of the Roman Republic.

  156 BC: The Fourth Roman-Illyrian War.

  135–35 BC: A hundred years of sporadic hostilities between the Illyrians and the Romans.

  59 BC: The region of southern Illyria called ‘Dalmatia’ is changed from being a protectorate to being a Roman province, re-named ‘Illyricum’. Northern Illyria, known as ‘Pannonia’, is still independent, but under increasing Roman influence.

  35–12 BC: Gaius Octavianus, later to become Caesar Augustus, launches a series of military campaigns against the Illyrians to bring them under complete subjection, with only partial success.

  12–9 BC: The region of northern Illyria called ‘Pannonia’ is conquered by Caesar Augustus’ stepson Tiberius Claudius Nero, and is incorporated into the Roman province of Illyricum. Peace in the region is maintained until 6 AD.

  6–9 AD: The Great Illyrian Revolt, a massive uprising against Roman rule throughout the province of Illyricum. Romans suffer heavy losses, and are forced to commit tens of thousands of troops to the region to suppress the rebellion. Tiberius Claudius Nero and Aulus Caecina Severus lead Roman forces in this war.

  Late September, 9 AD: The Battle of Teutoburg. An estimated 10,000 Romans from the 17th, 18th and 19th Legions are killed by the Germanic barbarians, led by Arminius, during a four-day battle in what is now north-western Germany. Soon afterwards, the Germans drive all surviving Romans out of Germania.

  10 AD: Rome launches its revenge campaign against Arminius and his rebel forces in Germania. The war lasts for six years; Tiberius leads the legions in the first two years of the war, and then Tiberius’ nephew Germanicus commands the legions during the remaining four years.

  14 AD: Caesar Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, dies. Tiberius Claudius Nero becomes Rome’s second emperor and is crowned Emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar. The Roman legions in both Germania and Pannonia mutiny upon Augustus’ death, and both uprisings are bloodily suppressed.

  15 AD: Rebellion breaks out in northern Africa, led by the Numidian warlord Tacfarinas, threatening Rome’s grain supply.

  Late 16 AD: Emperor Tiberius is forced to divert more and more troops to suppress Tacfarinas’ rebel army in Africa, and so he halts military operations against Arminius and his Germanic rebels.

  17 AD: Tiberius and Germanicus hold their triumphal celebrations for their wars against the Illyrian and Germanic rebels. Tiberius’ son Drusus Castor is appointed governor of Illyricum, and he holds this post for three years.

  19 AD: Germanicus suddenly dies, possibly assassinated.

  19 or 20 AD: Sometime during Emperor Tiberius’ reign, the province of Illyricum is split in half into the provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia.

  21 AD: Tacfarinas’ rebellion in northern Africa is crushed.

  37 AD: Emperor Tiberius dies. Gaius Caligula becomes Rome’s third emperor.

  Introduction

  When people hear the words ‘ancient history’, they usually think of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece or Rome. This is what I like to call ‘Ancient History’s Big Four’, because practically everything that is spoken about in the broad field of ancient history is usually done in relation to one of these four major sub-fields. An incalculable number of books, journals, magazine articles and television documentaries have been produced in relation to these four civilizations. The sheer volume of all of that information will probably destroy your brain.

  Once you get beyond the Big Four, then you come across cultures that appear to be of secondary importance. These mostly consist of the civilizations with which one or more members of the Big Four were in contact. Examples would probably be the Nubians, Persians or Celts. There are scholars who devote their entire lives to studying these people and you can find plenty of books about them published in a variety of languages, but it’s important to know that each one of these civilizatio
ns is inextricably linked with one of the major civilizations that form the Big Four. You can’t talk about Nubia without talking about Egypt. You can’t talk about the Persians without talking about Greece. You can’t talk about the Celts without talking about Rome. You see?

  Finally, you get to the absolute bottom of the ancient historical hierarchy: the civilizations, cultures and people of ancient history that hardly anyone knows about, even the so-called ‘experts’. These are people that are only mentioned in passing within a few sentences or in the occasional footnote. I guarantee you, most or possibly all of these peripheral ancient cultures are never spoken of in school textbooks and not even the most advanced and specified university courses concerning ancient history are likely to cover these people. Part of the reason why is that available information about these long-forgotten cultures is extremely limited: you might know their name and when and where they existed, but aside from that, their society, their history and how they interacted with the world around them is either a total enigma or is never seriously researched. Another reason why these people are never discussed in detail is because they are simply considered not important enough to be worth studying. Really, what high school freshman studying general world history or even a graduate student writing a thesis for his or her PhD has heard of the Adyrmachidae? Or the Rhaetians? Yet even so, each one of these people is important in their own way. The Adyrmachidae might have been small in number, but they were one of the most powerful of the ancient Libyan tribes and were likely Egypt’s major enemy on their western border, and it’s possible that they were the ones that prevented the Egyptian civilization from expanding westwards into northern Africa. The Rhaetians were a small minor-ranking collection of tribes dwelling in northern Italy and Austria, but the Romans had to conquer them because their lands blocked off eastern overland access to the Italian Peninsula, and apparently they made the best wine that Caesar Augustus ever had. That might have been the real reason why the Romans wanted to conquer them!

  What boggles my mind is that there were people in ancient history who were important, but are now largely forgotten. For example, hardly anybody talks about the Alans now, but they were one of the major threats to Rome and the Persian Empire from the second to fifth centuries AD. Their legacy has largely been shoved aside by other ancient horse-riding barbarians that are more familiar to us, such as the Scythians and especially the Huns. The Gepids held control over central Europe with a bloody iron fist for three hundred years: other barbarians and the Romans were absolutely terrified of them! However, if you ask somebody with only a general knowledge of ancient Roman or early Byzantine history about the Gepids and the important role that they played in Late Antiquity, that person will likely look at you with a blank stare.

  Then there are the people that I wish to discuss in this book: the people who, for centuries, made the Greeks and Romans shake. These were people whose fleets of snake-headed warships terrorized the seas, whose warriors slaughtered the best troops that ‘civilization’ could offer, whose fortified cities would have made the builders of medieval castles green with envy. They were rich, they were powerful, they were dynamic, they were on the rise, and it’s no exaggeration to say that they could have become the fifth member of ancient history’s hall of greats. They were the Illyrians.

  Most people today have never heard of the Illyrians, and those who do know about their existence likely learned of them through reading the biographies of Alexander the Great who fought against them or reading the histories of the ancient Romans who conquered them. The Illyrians occupied the land that many people today would still generically call ‘Yugoslavia’, even though this name has not been used since the early 1990s. The Illyrians controlled this large swath of territory for almost five centuries, and were a major economic and military force in the ancient world. Yet now, they are almost entirely unknown.

  The ancient history of the western Balkans is an unfortunately neglected subject of study, largely due to the appeal of other more famous ancient empires and civilizations. The part that this region played in the saga of ancient history has, for the most part, been confined to sideshow references regarding episodes in the histories of other more established and more popularly-appealing cultures. Very little has been done in terms of direct scholarship in which the native inhabitants of the western Balkans are the primary focus, and not something that is sometimes alluded to when speaking of the history of the Greeks, Macedonians or Romans. It is a real shame that the ancient history of this land and the people who once lived there has become academic terra incognita. Only a handful of books have been written on that subject in any detail, as opposed to the tens of thousands of texts that have been written concerning the classical civilizations of Europe and Asia. Considering how much physical territory the western Balkans encompasses, and considering how many various cultures must have lived there, the history of this region must surely be on a par with the studies of other European tribal cultures such as the Celts or the ancient Germans.

  In all honesty, I must confess that I too am guilty of neglecting the study of the region known in ancient times as ‘Illyria’. I was aware to some extent of the people that lived there but again, this was due to studying other cultures, and once in a while the inhabitants of this region would be mentioned in passing. I knew that the ancient Illyrians existed, but absolutely nothing else besides that fact; a name and nothing more.

  My interest in the study of ancient Yugoslavia and its enigmatic inhabitants started when I was researching my first book Four Days in September, which concerned the Battle of Teutoburg (more commonly but in my opinion incorrectly known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest), fought between the Romans and the Germans in the year 9 AD. While doing research on that subject, I learned that three years earlier in 6 AD, a major rebellion against Rome erupted within Illyria. This Illyrian war lasted for three gruelling and tiresome years; you’ll find out why I use those adjectives as you read this book. This Balkan rebellion resulted in the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, making it one of the first major wars fought in the years after the birth of Jesus Christ. This was unquestionably a major event during the reign of Caesar Augustus, and yet I had never heard of it before. Considering that I was researching another great tribal uprising at the time, in this case that of the Germans, the story of a similar mass uprising taking place only a few years earlier understandably captured my interest and imagination. I decided to write about this important and yet largely unknown event.

  Once Four Days in September was finished, work began in earnest. I needed to learn as much as I could about the culture of the Illyrians, their convoluted history with other European cultures and especially their relationship with Rome, and of course the story of the rebellion itself – the ‘Great Illyrian Revolt’, as it has become known to modern scholars, although the Romans themselves never called this war by that name. As I read more, I became more interested, and now I regard the ancient inhabitants of the western Balkans, the Illyrians, as one of the great cultures of classical-age Europe, one that is far richer than I and probably most people had ever thought before.

  Information concerning the Great Illyrian Revolt is maddeningly sparse. In contrast to the relative ease of writing a book about the Battle of Teutoburg, which is a well-known event and has already been heavily researched by others, researching the Illyrian uprising was more demanding. Ancient sources written on this subject and on the Illyrians in general were few in number and difficult to track down. As usual, Gaius Paterculus and Cassius Dio provided the bulk of the information. I found a handful of general survey books on the Illyrians, but I found no secondary source material written exclusively about the history of this rebellion. Therefore I could not compare and contrast various viewpoints and hypotheses proposed by modern authors, as I like to do when discussing matters of ancient history. Also, while many Roman artefacts have been found in the western Balkans that can be broadly dated to the first half of the first century AD,
I am not aware of any archaeological finds that are directly related to the story of this rebellion, which means that I cannot examine and analyse artefacts to see how they fit in with the historic record. All in all, I knew that researching and writing this book was going to be challenging since I had little material to work with, but I hope that the effort was worth it, and I also hope that the end product is worthy of some praise.

  As I am writing this, I am conscious that many of the archaeological sites that I describe in this book are under threat. There are numerous reports that the Muslim terrorist organization known as ISIS has been gaining ground within Bosnia, a predominantly Muslim country within Europe. ISIS already has a reputation for destroying ancient and medieval artefacts and even entire archaeological sites because these things and places do not fit in with their particular ideology about world history. It is possible that Islamic fanaticism might very well lead to the destruction of ancient sites within the western Balkans in the near future, so it’s important to have as much scholarship done with regard to the ancient history of this region while we can still do so.

  This book relies upon ancient documents, archaeological evidence, analysis by modern historians and my own hypotheses. I have tried to the best of my limited abilities to create an accurate portrayal of locations, persons and events. All quotations are clearly cited as being the words of their authors. My personal interpretations or opinions are clearly stated as such. If there are any errors in facts or translations, I truly apologize.

  Chapter one

  The Illyrians

  ‘What country, friends, is this?’

  The play was called Twelfth Night. Its title was based upon a festival undertaken in some Christian countries during the Medieval and Renaissance periods to mark the end of the fabled Twelve Days of Christmas, beginning on Christmas Day itself and ending on the fifth day of January. On the closing day of this festive holiday season, an impressive party would be held, known simply as Twelfth Night. It was a welcome break from the everyday routines of life in the fifteenth, sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a day devoted entirely to the Bacchanalian pursuits of drunkenness, rowdiness and general tomfoolery. Status quo social conventions were temporarily cast aside, peasants became lords, masters became the servants, and the whole world in general was turned upside-down.1