Res Novae Romanae: A Revolution of the Third Century TL

[Salvador79]

@guinazacity and Cuauhtemoc,
thanks a lot! No worries. Any future comments are very welcome, though.

[FONT=&quot]From [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Iacomu Parrokianu: Land and Freedom. The Confederal Republic`s War of Independence. Athene: Academia Nova, 2741 AUC, pp. 2[FONT=&quot]3[/FONT]f.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]:

[/FONT]

The Empire Splinters
​

[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot][FONT=&quot]Claudius [FONT=&quot]proposed to Odaenathus a [FONT=&quot]joint offensive against [FONT=&quot]the Confederacy.

But Odaenathus was wary. He [FONT=&quot]knew that Shapur was gathering [FONT=&quot]forces, and he feared more for the loss of [FONT=&quot]the [FONT=&quot]loyal[FONT=&quot] and stable core of his realm than he hoped for [FONT=&quot]a c[FONT=&quot]omplete domination of [FONT=&quot]Anatolia[FONT=&quot]. And[FONT=&quot], he considered, his policy of integrating all those regions where old elites [FONT=&quot]had managed to keep the upper [FONT=&quot]hand, while leaving places with powerful Christian groups [FONT=&quot]and successful [FONT=&quot]sh[FONT=&quot]epherd/peasant/slave revolts[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT] [FONT=&quot]to the Confederacy, had been pretty successful so far[FONT=&quot]. All-out war [FONT=&quot]against Alexandria would raise a lot of dust. Better not to give your [FONT=&quot]own coloni, soldiers, bedo[FONT=&quot]uins [FONT=&quot]etc. stupid ideas.

Instead, [FONT=&quot]Od[FONT=&quot]aenathus brought Claudius to agree to a division of spheres of influence: [FONT=&quot]Od[FONT=&quot]aenathus would control [FONT=&quot]Asia as best he could, while [FONT=&quot]Claudius should attempt to[FONT=&quot] stabilise Europe[FONT=&quot]. Once [FONT=&quot]Claudius would have buil[FONT=&quot]t up a large enough navy, and Odaenathus had gathered enough troops for a potential two-front war again[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]st [FONT=&quot]the Sasanians in the East [FONT=&quot]and the Confederacy in the West, they would strike together[FONT=&quot]: Odaenathus [FONT=&quot]taking the Levante, and Claudius landing where[FONT=&quot]ver he saw fit in Africa, Mauretania, Cyrenaica or [FONT=&quot]Egypt[FONT=&quot], [FONT=&quot]attacking Egypt from both sides. Odae[FONT=&quot]nathus expected this plan to take at least five years, and he admonished Claudius and everyone present during the negociations to keep absolute[FONT=&quot]ly quiet[FONT=&quot].

[FONT=&quot]Now Claudius had to get back [FONT=&quot]across the sea to Thrace[FONT=&quot], which would turn out[FONT=&quot] not to be an easy task. The Confederate Navy was al[FONT=&quot]erted now[FONT=&quot], and while [FONT=&quot]the r[FONT=&quot]ebel troops [FONT=&quot]avoided any confrontation [FONT=&quot]with [FONT=&quot]Claudius` large force on land, they [FONT=&quot]prevented [FONT=&quot]t[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]wo attempts of his [FONT=&quot]crossing the [/FONT]Dardanelles[FONT=&quot], [FONT=&quot]entering [FONT=&quot]or sinking several of the [FONT=&quot]formerly commercially used, [FONT=&quot]poorly armed[/FONT][/FONT] ships [FONT=&quot]Claudius had [FONT=&quot]pro[FONT=&quot]cured at Abydos. Claudius was coerced to [FONT=&quot]camp his army in Bithynia as winter approached[FONT=&quot]. [/FONT][/FONT]Only [FONT=&quot]his third attempt, in [FONT=&quot]1011[/FONT], this time at the Bos[FONT=&quot]phorus again, succeeded, and it c[FONT=&quot]laimed the lives o[FONT=&quot]f at least 1000, maybe even 2000 soldiers [FONT=&quot]who fought the [FONT=&quot]Confederate [/FONT]navy from [FONT=&quot]inferior ships [FONT=&quot]positioned throughout the [FONT=&quot]Propontis to allow [FONT=&quot]the main body of Claudius` army to lay a pontoon bridge across the Bosphorus and [FONT=&quot]evacuate[FONT=&quot] the rest of the soldiers onto the [FONT=&quot]Thracian side.

As Claudius rode back towards Italy, [FONT=&quot]more bad news reached him. Vandals and Iazyges had crossed the [FONT=&quot]exposed Danube border and [FONT=&quot]roamed freely through Pannonia, looting the land. And[/FONT][/FONT] [FONT=&quot]Franks had crossed the Rhine and plundered Germania [FONT=&quot]Inferior and Galli[FONT=&quot]a Belgica. Upon their return, [FONT=&quot]they had been[FONT=&quot] defeated by a certain [FONT=&quot]Marcus Cassianus P[FONT=&quot]ostumus[FONT=&quot], who[FONT=&quot]se victory had been something of a surprise, given the very thin[FONT=&quot] protection [FONT=&quot]the Rhine[FONT=&quot] provinces had enjoyed. His troops [FONT=&quot]had immediately proclaimed him Emperor, and [FONT=&quot]the curiae of various coloniae and municipia as well as [FONT=&quot][FONT=&quot]bucelarised estate owners [FONT=&quot]throughout Gallia[FONT=&quot] and Germani[FONT=&quot]a - [FONT=&quot]regular provincial administration [FONT=&quot]was atrophied [FONT=&quot]for lack of revenues and lack of [FONT=&quot]military power with which to [FONT=&quot]extract the [FONT=&quot]required revenues - had already recognised hi[FONT=&quot]m.[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]
[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

 

[altwere]

I just found this yesterday. Very well done.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont. of "The Empire Splinters":

Claudius sorted out his priorities. He sent messengers to Rome with respectful greeting to the Senate, demanding imperium proconsulare maius so he could legitimately lead the remaining Danube legions into battle against the barbarian invaders in Pannonia, and promising to revert any unlawful expropriation conducted by Regalianus. He also sent messengers to Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensum, calling Postumus a "dear friend" and congratulating him on his victory over the Franks.

Then he transported his legions to Pannonia - some ferried by the Danube fleet, while he himself rode with the cavalry across the Balkans, sorting out a few minor issues in the Thessalian and Thracian countryside, making sure that the imperial mines still worked properly, inspecting the state of the military roads.

When Claudius arrived in Pannonia, the Vandals and Iazyges had already disappeared, leaving behind a trail of sacking and looting. He crossed the Danube to lead his powerful army into a punitive campaign. Over the last decades, the Danube legions had gathered experience with such campaigns; Maximinus Thrax, Pacatianus, Decius and Regalianus had succeeded with them before. This time would be no different. Various bands of Iazyges and Vandals were confronted and slain or carried off into slavery. Villages were burned, wells made unusable, holy sites desecrated. Even though this strategy never kept the barbarians off for more than a decade, Claudius went through with it, even capturing a Hasdingian king and his entire kin.

The Great Fire
​

Meanwhile, public order had eroded dangerously in Rome. Rising food prices and reduced annona handouts, which together meant hungry masses, repeatedly caused riots in the streets of Rome, which, in the absence of any significant military force, lasted for days. Looting was omnipresent, and so were leaders of various apocalyptic cults, some of them Novatianists and even Agonistici, but many others also belonging to various polytheistic cults, who preached that the end of the world was nigh, and people`s souls could only be saved if they followed them and their rules. Attempts from the upper echelons of society to crack down on protests, lootings and conspiracies were coordinated by the praefectus urbi, Gaius Iunius Donatus, whose vigilia were rumoured to kill Roman citizens suspected of plundering or subversive activities without trial


But not even the approach of the iron fist was able to restore order in Rome; perhaps it even contributed to heating up the atmosphere, turning latent tensions into open aggression. In the night between July 11th and 12th, 1011 AUC, fires broke out both on the upper Esquiline hill, where wealthy Romans had their villae, and in the densely populated valley below; which fire was lit first is unclear, and so is the question of how the fires had broken out and who had been responsible; all possible traces were devoured by the flames.


Flames soon spread throughout the Eternal City, helped not only by the hot and dry weather, but also by panicking masses, reckless looters, and a distrust among the plebs vis-à-vis the vigilia, who were put in charge of fighting and containing the fire as well as evacuating the population. Attempts to create fire breaches and to extinguish fires with counter-fires were hampered by obstinate resistance as much as by general panic. All attempts at containing the flames, which raged for five days, proved futile, until heavy rains set in on July 17th. By then, most of Rome East of the Tiber had become a victim of the flames.






Innumerable edifices which had shaped the urban landscape had been either completely destroyed or suffered serious damage. Hundreds of thousands of Romans, who had already been stricken by hunger, poverty and insecurity before, had become homeless now. The greatest city in the world, and with it much of what had characterized it for centuries, had destroyed itself and was no longer recognizable to those who lived in and around it.


In the days during and immediately after the catastrophe, there had been both outstanding courage, bravery, solidarity, and engagement for the common cause, but also vilest hatred and crime, and, more than ever before, speeches about the end of the world, which had finally come. And had it not come? Rome, the Eternal City, the centre of the world, had burned. Its fate had been a thousand years of glory, and these years had ended now – the number of people who were inclined to believe this were much more numerous after the fire than before.


But not everyone saw things their way. Among those who held – or, in his case, only just developed – views in explicit contradiction of the millenarian apocalypticism was the philosopher Plotinus. How he experienced and understood what Rome was going through is reflected in a text which marked his transition from a metaphysical to a political understanding of Platonism:

In the Light of the Fire (Plotinus, anno MXI AVC, dies VIII post incendium)

As our City was burning, and in the past three days after the fire, I have seen, done, and understood more than I had in an entire lifetime before. I had carried buckets of water with people I had never met before and might never see again; I had assembled planks of wood into provisional shelters with and for people I had not known; I have spoken with those who struggled beside me against the fire and the disaster it wrought upon us; I have spoken with plain and educated people, with people who firmly believe that our age or even our world has come to an end, and with people who say otherwise, with people who believe in one God or more Gods or in none at all, with people who give orders, with those who obey them, and with those who refuse to listen to them. I have spoken with them about the reasons of this fire, and of the calamities that had befallen us even before the fire, and about what the next days would bring and what our own roles and duties were. And as night fell and those around me lay down, exhausted from their day`s hard struggle, from hunger, or from the grief of losing their dearest, I was thinking by myself, quietly, missing the help of the elders, of Plato and his disciples, my texts of them having been devoured by the flames, with only the shadows of their words, which are again only shadows of the truths they had glimpsed, in my memory.

And, with every day and every night, more and more of the truth began to reveal itself. I had been wrong in condemning Eugenios for esteeming civil virtue more important than meditation. I had been mistaken in presuming the soul`s path to the One must be a quiet, lonely quest, wherein one disconnects himself from the disturbances of the material world. I had underestimated the wisdom of the old Athenians, and now I realized it: Those who spoke to me and appeared dedicated to what I, too, had considered the straightest way to escape from our delusions, had not been those who appeared to be in any proximity of the truth. Many of those seeking escape from delusion seemed to have fallen prey to just it, conjecturing irredeemed visions of a somber fate, which seemed to blur their intellectual powers more than their detachment from the sufferings and the mundane labour we were faced with seemed to help them.


How different was the thinking of those who excelled in public virtue and devoted themselves wholeheartedly to saving and restoring the common affairs! Whomever I met – people of simple upbringing and modest education, or people of great erudition and knowledge alike – who struggled with me to extinguish a fire, carry a doter, or build a shelter: their common work and effort in the service of the common good seemed to make them very astute observers of truths. They rejected to engage in baseless speculations (for example as to who had caused the fire), by which they showed a great sense of the difference between truth and deception and an intuitive grasp of the methods by which this difference can be made. They excelled at the organization of affairs they had never been tasked with before, each contributing some knowledge and capabilitiy and everyone applying it with systematicity, and they were well aware that the behavior they all showed now was how a Politeia should work instead of demanding this, calling for that, or wishing something else, just as they were aware that, after the catastrophe, things would most likely revert to a state much more remote from the ideal. Yet they did not jump to the foolish conclusion that a catastrophe was something good; they knew – and I knew – that public virtue was what swept aside the structures and habits which hindered and hampered us, not the fire itself.

This is why, on the other hand, Eugenios is wrong when he underestimates the threat posed by those who promise divine salvation and delivery if only we indulge in some kind of superstition. We need not and must not rely on people who preach substituting the capabilities of our own souls to a blind faith in something which they say had been revealed to them.

Our Eternal City and the res publica it stands for is not doomed to fall, at least not because of some magic of numbers or due to the intervention of a vengeful oriental God. Rebuilding it requires encouraging the public virtue of the hundreds of thousands, nay, the millions, and discouraging their apathetic and fruitless fads for redemption by someone else, be He from this observable world or an ill-conceived world beyond.

 

[Salvador79]

I know I´ve committed a bad crime. We all love Rome because, well, we love history. Burning it down is something you just don`t do.
And I hadn`t planned it from the outset. (Also, it´s not something that occurred, or could ever have occurred, in my althistory.wikia.com timeline "Abrittus" where I first formulated my ideas, so this is the definite departure from that.) But the more I thought about it, this couldn`t go on without shaking up Rome, and I didn`t see how a single group could have come out on top in 3rd century Rome; the more I thought about it, the more it appeared to me that the whole situation was quite catastrophic for this huge city.

Now I need some input from you guys:
Claudius is currently North of the Danube, but he´ll have heard of the fire by now. He`ll have to come back to Rome.

What is he going to do? What do you think?

 

[guinazacity]

The corrupt Roma must burn! Alexandria is the Metropolis of the people!

 

[MorningDew]

I know I´ve committed a bad crime. We all love Rome because, well, we love history. Burning it down is something you just don`t do.
And I hadn`t planned it from the outset. (Also, it´s not something that occurred, or could ever have occurred, in my althistory.wikia.com timeline "Abrittus" where I first formulated my ideas, so this is the definite departure from that.) But the more I thought about it, this couldn`t go on without shaking up Rome, and I didn`t see how a single group could have come out on top in 3rd century Rome; the more I thought about it, the more it appeared to me that the whole situation was quite catastrophic for this huge city.

Now I need some input from you guys:
Claudius is currently North of the Danube, but he´ll have heard of the fire by now. He`ll have to come back to Rome.

What is he going to do? What do you think?

What Rome needs right now is thousands of tents to house the refugees.

When things settle down for a bit, the city needs a re-building plan. This could be the chance to give Rome proper streets and avenues that it never really had compared to Alexandria and Antioch, something which would be greatly appreciated by the populace if done right. (rebuild the city on a completely new layout with wide, straight roads and streets)

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Before rebirth must come destruction. The new Rome will be a much grander and more improved city than it was before.

 

[CountPeter]

So is the coming Rome going to be inspired by kalipolis?

 

[Salvador79]

Thanks for your comments!
I hope to have an update ready by Monday, though whether it´s going to be on Rome or on the next developments in the Confederacy I don`t know yet.

 

[Salvador79]

So is the coming Rome going to be inspired by kalipolis?

Do you think Claudius (who in this ATL is never going to be called "Gothicus", wears the purple at a younger age and has been shaped by a career in a slightly differently styled army) is going to listen to Plotinus? (This is an open and honest question.) And if he is, what is he likely to do (and be able to do)? And if he´s not, will a lofty philosopher have any impact among hundreds of thousands of refugees and hundreds of gurus preaching about the world`s end?

 

[Salvador79]

Four Pillars of the Revolution

[FONT=&quot]The update on Rome is somewhat complex, so I´ll just post something about how the Confederacy developed in the years of external peace.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]


[/FONT][FONT=&quot]from: Victor Honoramonte: "The Confoederatio as the Origin of Modern Democracy." In: Historia Antiqua (39), 2703 AUC, pp. 40-45:[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]
The Four Pillars of the Revolution[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The successful revolts and the creation of the confederacy and its Councils had laid the foundation for a truly revolutionary res publica, but they did not yet bring it about, or at least not everywhere. The Confederacy of 1010 AUC was a loose association of theocracies, isonomies, oligarchies and even a kingdom. It became the forerunner of our modern political system only by achieving four fundamental changes – which were only achieved at the great cost of internal turmoil and war:[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

[/FONT]

• [FONT=&quot]universal apeleutherosis [/FONT][FONT=&quot][1][/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]the extension of isonomy onto the civitas level[/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]eleuthera latreia[/FONT][FONT=&quot] [2][/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]isepikarpia [/FONT][FONT=&quot][3][/FONT]

Universal apeleutherosis
Slaves who had freed themselves – mostly shepherds and slaves working in agriculture and mines – had been a backbone of the revolution and made up a good part of its new local vigils and confederate navy. In all of Egypt and Africa, in Sicily, in the parts of Mauritania brought under the control of the Agonistici and in the parts of Judaea controlled by Simon`s army, in Cilicia including Antiochia and Tarsus, and in Caesarea Maritima, general assemblies – or something which resembled them – had officially abolished slavery. In the coastal towns of Cyrenaica and Marmarica, the conquering armies of the allied rebels had freed the slaves, too.


But Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes and a handful of other Aegean islands had joined the Confederacy (more or less) voluntarily without a prior revolution, and they joined the Confederacy as slave-holding civitates. In Simon`s Jewish theocracy and in the Kingdom of Samaria, there had not been any official abolition of slavery, either, although the new elites here often had no slaves themselves and there were few slaves around in these regions, where the land was still mostly worked by free small-holders.


Initially, problems caused by these legal and social differences were small. The actively proselytizing or politically agitating abolitionist groups had other priorities: the Agonistici still struggled to maintain control over large cities like Carthage and Leptis Magna and slowly expanded Westwards into Mauritania Tingitana, while the Good Citizens, whose stronghold was Alexandria where their numbers were growing every day, were heavily occupied with making the institutions of their new isonomic city and the whole confederal level work, and, in the over-enthusiasm that is inherent in so many beginnings, worked themselves to exhaustion in voluntary projects of fortifications, canal improvements, granary extensions, new hospitals and the like. Also, with all relevant slave-holding civitates being islands, there wasn`t much of a problem with escaping slaves.


But as over 50 civitates of Asia Minor joined the Confederacy during and after Regalianus` failed Anatolian campaign, some of them due to victorious rebellions of slaves, coloni and the plebs urbana, but others merely because they wanted greater autonomy and no more Roman taxation, among them large cities like Pergamon, and as the numbers of Good Citizens were growing elsewhere than in Alexandria, too, the problem became more pressing.


Clustered around the Rhodian Academy, a significant group began agitating for an abolition of slavery, or apeleutherosis, in Rhodes, too. When they were unable to sway the opinion of the boule, a group of Rhodian abolitionists went to the isonomic polis of Kaunos, where one of them got himself elected as delegate to the Fifth Council of the Confederacy in 1013, which took place in Bubastis. He introduced a motion to declare all slaves in all civitates freed and slavery officially outlawed forever.


The motion found support from Egypt, Africa, Sicily, Mauritania and a few other civitates, and met with staunch resistance from all slave-holding islands, who referred to the letters of the symphonesis, where it was clearly stated that each civitas should give itself whatever laws it saw fit. Much of the Levante was undecided. In the vote, the motion missed the two-thirds majority by a narrow margin.


It didn`t take long – actually only two years – until the slave-owning civitas of Pergamon came up with a counter-proposition. Slaves escaping to neighbouring slave-free civitates had become a serious problem for slave-holders in Anatolia in the meantime. Evidently no longer insisting upon the autonomy of the civitates, delegates from Pergamon insisted on a clarification that the slaves of a citizen of another civitas be respected by all civitates just like any other property would be. This motion, too, fell through. But the political debate had just begun.


To be continued.



[1] abolition of slavery / emancipation
[2] freedom of religion
[3] the concept combines collective ownership of land with equal rights of all rural citizens engaged in agriculture to possess and enjoy usufructuary rights over an equal or equally valuable piece of this commonly owned land

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

The slavery debate heated up over the next years, both in theoretical and in practical politics. Xenimanthas, an escaped slave from Crete, who had not only become citizen of the slave-free civitas of Ammonium, but also one of its most prominent Agonistic presbyters, was apprehended by Gortynian vigils
while on a proselytizing tour of the Aegean islands, and brought to his former owner. Serious tensions arose between the civitates of Gortyn and Ammonium, in which neighbouring civitates of Crete took the side of Gortyn, while the Agonistic movement whipped its supporters into a frenzy against the godless island.
In the debate, which was only exacerbated by such incidents, various groups openly favoured abolition, for very different reasons:

• Agonistic (and various other) Christians claimed that no human being was superior to another, that we were all created as images of God, that we were all sinners, redeemed only by the Lord`s mercy, and that slavery was against the Lord`s will.
• The Good Citizens, who were becoming the dominant philosophical school in the entire Confederate realm, argued that slave-holding societies were decadent societies lacking of public virtue: the slave-owners and other privileged people got used to reaping without sowing, they would demand things instead of working towards achieving them; the slaves, on the other hand, were not interested in the common good of which they did not partake; the entire society, lastly, was distancing itself from truth and the quest after it because it was built on a non-beneficial lie.

Pro-slavery positions often argued with the coherence of the traditional legal system, with the excellent examples of virtue exposed by classical slave-holding societies, with the high relevance of the civitates` political autonomy, and, pragmatically, with the high military relevance of the islands in question, which should not be hazarded for an issue which was, in their view, not pressing.
In the first, peaceful decade of the Confederacy, this issue was not solved. It was only after the great effort of the final phase of the Revolutionary War of Independence that structural reforms, especially the generalization of isonomy on the level of the civitates (see below), were tackled – and a universal apeleutherosis found a political majority at a Council in 1025.
After this groundbreaking decision of the Council of Carthage,27 civitates on islands and on the Asian mainland declared their secession from the Confederacy and the formation of the short-lived, separate Neso-Koinon.

 

[CountPeter]

Do you think Claudius (who in this ATL is never going to be called "Gothicus", wears the purple at a younger age and has been shaped by a career in a slightly differently styled army) is going to listen to Plotinus? (This is an open and honest question.) And if he is, what is he likely to do (and be able to do)? And if he´s not, will a lofty philosopher have any impact among hundreds of thousands of refugees and hundreds of gurus preaching about the world`s end?

In all honesty I have no clue. It wouldn't be the first time a crisis led a leader to listen to a radical philosophy, but I was asking more in context of (if I remember correctly as I am on my phone) you talking about coming political systems rivalling the radical confederalism of this tl.

 

[Salvador79]

In all honesty I have no clue. It wouldn't be the first time a crisis led a leader to listen to a radical philosophy, but I was asking more in context of (if I remember correctly as I am on my phone) you talking about coming political systems rivalling the radical confederalism of this tl.

Ah, I see.
Well, there will be rivalling systems forming in the next decades for sure, and things in Rome will certainly change, too.
I've decided about the next update on Rome, maybe I can finish it tomorrow.

 

[guinazacity]

Great update as always. The republic will he a hotbed of new, radical philosophical thought for sure.

 

[Salvador79]

[FONT=&quot]From [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Iacomu Parrokianu: Land and Freedom. The Confederal Republic`s War of Independence. Athene: Academia Nova, 2741 AUC, pp. 26f.:

[/FONT]

The Dream of Rome Rebuilt

​

When Claudius heard of the Great Fire of Rome, he rode South with two legions, leaving the Danube border and its protection with the three remaining ones and various auxiliaries, most of this force commanded by people from the inner circle formerly around Regalianus, now around Claudius.

Claudius saw Rome, the imperial city for which he had never had any specific admiration, lying helpless. More than 400,000 homeless people roamed the Campania Romana. Diseases had begun to spread and reached Rome itself, where the quarters West of the Tiber had survived the fire relatively unscathed. The streets of the urbs and its surrounding countryside had become unsafe at any time of day or night.

From the onset, Claudius took a military approach to relief and reconstruction. With the help of the legions, he had innumerable larger and smaller tents erected as provisional shelters for the homeless. Military medical specialists, renowned to be among the best of their profession, tended to the sick and wounded in an improvised valetudinarium. He and his experienced officers began drafting new legions with exceptionally large contingents of non-combattants – according to some sources, Claudius had gone so far as to draft six new legions. Although an extraordinary effort, this was meant to kill three flies with one strike: reducing the huge army of unemployed, recruiting a sufficiently large force which could bring order into the chaos, and preparing the necessary build-up of the imperial army, which had suffered severely from the breakaways of Odaenathus, Postumus and the Confederacy, from the lost Battle of Alexandria and from defections.

While Rome and the Campania were buzzing with novice and experienced soldiers, many different groups approached Claudius` inner circle and, when possible, the Emperor himself. Claudius was polite with various senatorial factions, but regarded them as largely irrelevant to his plans. The old praefectus urbi reported that the fire had surely been the radical Christians` fault. Claudius dismissed him for his bleak crisis management, replaced him with one of his cronies, but followed Donatus` hint nevertheless. The new wave of persecution hit the tens of thousands of Christians among the Romans and homeless Campanians with unprecedented intensity, conducted with all the might and minutenes of the Roman military instead of, as had been the case before, at the hands of divisions of the administration with only a handful of people under arms. Burning Christians became daily routine. Lacking houses or any other places to hide, the Christians - Claudius made no difference between Agonistici and more moderate communities - were an easy target. Their deaths went well with much of the rest of the population, many of whom came to believe the story of the vile Christian arson of Rome. With no other option at hand, thousands of Christians escaped the Latium under the readily available cloak of anonymity which the masses of displaced people provided. Most of them boarded ships - many of them towards Africa or Egypt, where they sought asylum with the Confederacy of Free Citizenries, where Christians, it was rumoured, were not merely welcome, but were just about to construct the Civitas Dei on this earth.

The philosopher Plotinus approached Claudius, too. He politely criticised the Emperor for uncrticially buying into Donatus` side of the story, but since he shared the Emperor`s conviction that the Christians were dangerous enemies of the res publica, no bad blood came of it, and Claudius respected Plotinus for his outspoken courage. More importantly, Plotinus attempted to win Claudius for the project of a radical social overhaul. He confronted the emperor with his analyses of what had been going wrong in the heart of the Empire – decaying euergetism, short-sighted selfishness, declining education – and elaborated how the fire and the near-destruction of the urbs could be taken as an opportunity to restore society on a sounder foundation.
While Claudius had no inclination towards platonic or indeed any other philosophy, Plotinus` analysis of society struck a chord with him. Claudius had regarded Rome and Italy and much of the civil senatorial upper classes as decadent, too. But Claudius arrived at a slightly different practical conclusion: Wasn`t the army, where he had spent most of his life, quite the opposite of what Plotinus had described? There was discipline and courage and solidarity, at least more often than not. Things tended to get done. Young soldiers received good training and some even good martian-academic education – Claudius himself, for example. Plotinus, Claudius felt, provided plenty of arguments for why the res publica should be modeled after the army. He shared his conclusion with the philosopher. Plotinus gave an ambivalent reply, citing from the history of Lakedaimon and Athens. But Claudius had made up his mind.
A few days later, after intensive talks with his comites, with various officers with and without military-academic backgrounds and with representatives of various professional collegia, Claudius came to the fore with his masterplan. He did not announce it in the Cura Iulia, but on a hillock in the Campania Romana, where the legions had made sure many tens of thousands would gather and listen to him.

Rome could not be returned to what it had been before the fire, Claudius began. It had sunken into a quagmire of corruption, division, apathy, and weakness. To restore Rome to its old glory required building on a more solid foundation. Claudius proclaimed the plan to build a new city.
Nova Roma would be built where now the Pontine Marshes lay. The semantics were fully intended and expounded by Claudius: from out of the mud and swamp, through honest common effort, a new clean, dry res publica would emerge. Besides, the drainage of the marshes would bring forth additional agricultural land; the provision with water would be easy, and Nova Roma would have a Tyrrhenian Sea port.

Claudius elaborated on his vision of Nova Roma. It should be populated with those who would work for its construction. Participation was open for everyone (or so he said); by building Nova Roma, slaves would become free men, and repenting Christians could become respected citizens again. The construction of the city - and by implication, its future administration, too - would be managed by Claudius` growing army. Everyone born in Nova Roma would go to free grammatici and gymnasia, and the new urbs would receive a splendid academy, headed by the spiritus rector Plotinus, which would be integrated into the military academic system, which would also comprise an architectural school which would work to perfect the new urbs over the coming generation, as well as a medical school, which would also manage a valetudinarium open to the Nova Roman public. The new imperial administration would be housed in Nova Roma, and so would the new navy anchor in its port. He would hear nothing about soldiers not entering the pomerium. Peace, order and the rule of the Roman laws would govern the new urbs under the vigilance of those who had devoted the best part of their lives to serving her. And of course, Nova Roma would be protected by generously planned and impenetrable walls so that it would not have to fear barbarian incursion. Draining the campanian swamps would eradicate the diseases which had haunted Rome since time immemorial.

In the next (and last) six years of his reign, Claudius devoted incredible amounts of his own, and more importantly, the Empire`s resources to this plan of building Nova Roma in the marshes. Impressive aquaeduct, canal and other civil engineering works were conducted, avenues were paved, and a couple of new buildings were also finished by 1017. But Claudius overstretched the available resources to an extent which was no longer viable. Both for the hungry populace and for the enormous (and in the case of the army, also decently paid) workforce and its animals, he required incredible amounts of food, fuel and construction materials, for which he paid with denarii which became increasingly debased. As prices went through the roof, Claudius dictated upper price ceilings and severely punished contraventions against them on severeal occasions. Ships full of grain from the Confederacy no longer arrived at Ostia and Tarracina after the price laws had made business unprofitable here, and sought out outlet markets elsewhere, often turning Eastwards through the newly refurbished Bubastis Canal into the Erythrean Sea. Even Italian estates preferred to redirect their production towards local subsistence, complemented only by equally local barter. To this, Claudius reacted with the occupation of hundreds of estates by the legions, and the enforcement of production and distribution towards the old and primarily the new Rome at rates fixed by himself. Neither landowners and their estate managers, nor their mostly indentured workforce were allowed to leave their economically relevant duties, and became tied to their land by military-administrative order. The landowning elite, who had viewed Claudius and his plans not without sympathy at first, increasingly panicked all over Italy, being caught in the middle between the two crushing threats of imperial military occupation on the one side, and revolts of the underclass on the other. In this panic, an almost suicidal conspirational group came together, and, bribing two of Claudius` trusted comites, managed to access the Emperor`s new building in Nova Roma. They killed him in his sleep on May 21st, 1017 AUC.

With Claudius, the dream of building Nova Roma in the marshes died, too. Too much of the Pontine marshes` surface had proved too difficult to drain, and the entire plans were too economically cumbersome. Claudius` new method of counting years “ab urbe recondita” was abandoned. Pontinium, as “Nova Roma” would be renamed, would be inhabited by some tens of thousands – only a fraction of the intended population, who enjoyed excellent and oversized public infrastructure in the first years and decades -, and later become yet another Latin port town. Relatively neglected by Claudius` administration, the old and, as it proved, eternal urbs Roma was slowly reconstructed in the improvised and chaotic manner which had characterized the city`s development throughout the ages. Full reconstruction was not even necessary for the time being, with more than a quarter of a million of Rome`s former inhabitants now either dead, or emigrated, or housed in Pontinium, or drafted into one of the legions, which Claudius` successors, a triumvirate of young officers, former comites of Claudius, would redeploy relatively evenly and rationally across the remaining Empire, which was once again threatened by Germanic groups in the North.

Claudius has been mocked as obsessed with grandiose ideas by contemporary historians, many of whom were of senatorial background, and given the (perhaps even popular) nickname “Paludicus” [1]. But Claudius Paludicus also left behind an enduring legacy: His immediate successors and those who succeeded them abandoned the rigid price laws and returned control over some of the occupied estates to cooperating landowners. But they kept the structure of running public administration as well as large parts of the economy under military command, just like the Emperor`s mines and the legion`s workshops had always functioned under military administration. Rome`s and provincial colonial and municipal Senates and curiae were kept as fig leaves, but from Claudius` reign on, at the latest, the Roman Empire had turned into a full-blown military dictatorship. Its armed forces, on the other hand, continued their transformation from mobile battlefield forces into an armed administrative apparatus with its own educated elite (the academici Martis) and a broad foundation of what had practically become well-trained and well-equipped farmer-soldiers, who began to openly marry and raise children: a social group which would only grow in proportion over the next decades, absorbing much of the former colonate.

[1] "paludes" = swamps

 

[Salvador79]

Conclusion of the Revolutionary War of Independence​

The Triumviri
Claudius Paludicus was succeeded by three of his comites, who carved up what had remained of the Roman Empire into three divisions: Probus was supposed to be in control of Italia, the Alps and Noricum; Mucianus was endowed with imperium over Epirus, Achaia, Thracia, Moesia and Dacia, while Diocles, the youngest of the three, was entrusted with Illyria, Dalmatia and Pannonia. They were supposed to be co-operating equals.
The emperors beginning with Decius, and especially Regalianus and Claudius, had left them not only a shrunk empire in crisis, but also a mixed political legacy of inappropriate grandiosity on the one hand, and firm military management of the society and economy on the other hand.

Diocles productively concentrated on the latter tradition. He reinvigorated agriculture and industry in Pannonia, having almost all of it managed by military administration. In inland Dalmatia, he did the same. To the old landowning families, he left only the Illyrian coast, but this was apparently enough to prevent greater tensions within his realm.

Mucianus pursued the same policies, but although he controlled the important mines of Thrace and Thessaly, his sphere of influence proved much less stable. Military administration was firmly in control and smoothly running in Dacia, inland Moesia and parts of Thracia, but all over the Greek South, on the islands and along the Aegean and Black Sea coasts, the fires of rebellion were unextinguishable. Ancient, dignified and wealthy cities like Athens and New Corinth proved ungovernable for Mucianus: first, they screamed for help against their own rebellious underclass and agents from the Confederacy, but when Mucianus installed military control, they protested against the trespassing on their established privileges and liberties. Tax-paying morale wasn’t particularly good, either, which meant that Mucianus had to use all the metal he extracted in order to keep his soldiers happy.

In Italy, Probus ran into even more difficulties. The peninsula was virtually ungovernable; renitent estate owners had virtually become warlords by now, while the growing underclass kept rebelling here and there, and the shrinking and economically decaying cities demanded tax reduction, an end to currency debasement, and the restoration of peaceful overland trade routes at the same time. He varied his strategies several times in his attempts to build up and maintain the military power necessary to stabilize his realm, but as the payment he was able to provide his soldiers with lost more and more of its value, defections increased. Probus was fighting a losing battle against time, he felt.
Mucianus concurred. Something had to be done – the large and productive bread-baskets in the South had to be won back. Not heeding Diocles` words of caution, Probus and Mucianus began the onslaught, in which the Roman Empire mobilized its forces one more time against the seceded Confederacy.


To be continued.

 

[guinazacity]

oh boy.

The confederation is going to tear them a new asshole. Never underestimate the morale of troops fighting for their own freedom.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

Ally and attack

The Triumviri were painfully conscious of the fact that their combined fleets were no match for the Confederate Navy. The direct way - a seaborne attack either on Africa or on Egypt, or both, the two being the centres of the Confederacy - was out of the question.

Instead, the Triumviri forged an alliance with Postumus, who had gone rather separate ways over the last decade and restructured his realm in significantly different ways from what Regalianus, Claudius and the Triumviri had done [1]. Postumus` contribution to the joint effort was not so much the handful of cavalry he deployed from Tingitana, but rather a safe passage of Probus` troops through the Galloroman-controlled Western Mediterranean into Mauritania.

Another invitation at an alliance was sent to Odaenathus. But Odaenathus did not reply. He had his hands full with the Sasanians, who had killed the pro-Palmyrene King of Adiabene and installed one of their own kin on the throne of this satrapy, or shahriyar, as they now called them. Odaenathus and Shapur had confronted each other in an inconclusive battle near Arbela. Now low-scale warfare had ensued, with both sides firmly entrenched. Odaenathus could not spare a single man. Mucianus took his lack of reply at least as a form of consent to the passage of imperial troops through Anatolia.

On April 15th, 1021 AUC, Probus began sailing his army to Mauritania, where he landed on April 20th. Meanwhile, on April 17th, Mucianus crossed the Bosphorus into Bithynia with his army, its pontoon bridge solidly protected by the Danube fleet.

The Confederate navy was taken by surprise in both cases and had no time to react. The Vicarii mobilised it Confederacy-wide and called for an urgency council in Alexandria to sanction a general mobilisation for war.

The council convened on the Kalendes of May, when Probus` troops had already gained some ground in Mauritania against highly motivated, but poorly organised local vigils and militias of Agonistic volunteers, while Mucianus was marching Southwards through Asia Minor. It condoned the general mobilisation almost unanimously.

Now, an enormous, but previously untested machinery sprang into life. In every civitas, the vigils, which were very heterogeneously structured across the Confederacy, were equipped from local arsenals and set themselves in motion, commanded by strategoi - some elected by a comitium, others appointed by other institutions, depending on the constitution of the civitas in question. All Egyptian troops gathered near Alexandria; the Judaeans marched to Caesarea, the Samaritans met the Cilicians near Antiochia. Sicilian troops, it had been decided, would remain and protect their island against a possible direct invasion from Italy, and so would those of the lesser Aegean islands, whose importance was in maintaining naval control, whereas Cretic troops joined the defenders of Cyrenaica and Africa at Hippo.
The soldiers of each civitas elected a military tribune from among themselves, who would sit, together with their commander, in the joint command of these army detachments, who were led by a vicarius each.

Once assembled, the Alexandrinian and Caesarean armies, altogether over 100,000 strong, were shipped to Attaleia in Pamphylia, where they were joined by some 10,000 men from Cyprus. The army gathered in Antiochia, of equal size as the Cypriotic, marched towards them, then with them against Mucianus` army.

The assembly of the troops in Hippo did not go that well, though. There were tensions between the Cretans and the almost exclusively Agonistic and Berber-dominated African militias. Crete had sent almost 12,000 men, although it already contributed majorly to the Confederacy`s naval efforts, while Africa and co., though much more populous, had only mobilised 20,000. Almost 10,000 Africans were already fighting against Probus in the West, though. The Hippo army now marched Westwards to join them in their defense against Probus.

[1] More on Postumus and reforms in the Gallo-Roman Empire in a subsequent post.

To be continued.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

May the God(s) bless the Confederacy in their war against Rome!