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GUERRILLA LEADERS AS LATRONES 2 GUERRILLA LEADERS AS LATRONES Viriatus and Tacfarinas 1 Introduction This chapter deals with a type of ‘bandit’ found in the context of political and military resistance to Roman rule: the rebel. 1 This type comprises certain leaders of native resistance movements against Rome. Such opposition is characteristic of both a limited phase and a restricted area of Roman history. The period of native wars of resistance begins at the height of the creation of the Empire in the second century bc and ends during the early Principate with the general completion of the Romanisation of the conquered regions. About this time, the last generations of provincials who had been born before the Roman conquest, or who had at least inherited and maintained ideals of freedom and independence from the time of the occupation of their homelands died out. Furthermore, by the end of the first century ad Roman provincial rule had assumed a form which allowed it to become at least more tolerable to its subjects. With regard to geography, the type of native resistance examined here remained specific to the Roman West. The inhabitants of the provinces of the Hellenistic East had had much longer to become accustomed to life under the rule of a hegemonic power than those of parts of Gaul, Britain, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Spain and North Africa. The Romans did not designate or represent every leader of a native resistance movement a latro. For example, Vercingetorix, Bato, Arminius, Boudicca and Julius Civilis all escaped being labelled <strong>latrones</strong>. I will attempt to explain why below. On the other hand, when resistance leaders such as Viriatus and Tacfarinas – my next subjects – appear in the Roman sources as ‘bandits’, the insinuation is not necessarily wholly pejorative. So why were they ‘bandits’? 2 Antecedents of the war against Viriatus In the middle of the second century bc shortage of land, overpopulation and the disruption of property rights led to population movement within Lusitania 33
BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE in the western part of the Iberian peninsula. 2 As all such movements, however justified their cause, manifested themselves as warlike invasions, in the course of the Lusitanian migrations the Roman province of Hispania Ulterior suffered looting and plundering. At the same time the Roman Senate had determined to return to a more offensive foreign policy. 3 The reasons for this change were very basic, and had nothing directly to do with the situation in Spain. The patres were seized by the feeling that they should do something to strengthen morality in their own ranks and to combat a weakening of military discipline. At that time, it could still not be ruled out that the latent conflict with Carthage might soon flare up again as open war. The Iberian peninsula was the likely battle ground; and here the attacks by Lusitanian tribes provided sufficient and, happily, legitimate grounds for military activity in the shape of reprisals. In 151 bc Servius Sulpicius Galba, at that time praetor of the province of Hispania Ulterior, received envoys from the Lusitanians who announced their wish to extend their peace agreement with Rome. Galba assured the envoys of his appreciation of the position in which their people found themselves forced by poverty to turn to banditry. According to Appian, he declared hypocritically: ‘The infertility of the earth and your own poverty compel you to do such a thing. I, however, will give my poor friends good land and settle them in a fertile region, in three groups.’ 4 The Lusitanians, acting in good faith, gathered in three groups, laid down their weapons voluntarily as ordered, and were then butchered at Galba’s command. 5 The massacre contributed significantly to an escalation of the war, which ended only in 133 bc with the fall of Numantia. Among the few survivors of the massacre was Viriatus, destined not many years later to lead Lusitanian resistance against Rome. Without doubt, his deepest motive was to exact revenge for Galba’s perfidious breach of trust. Viriatus appears in Hobsbawm’s terms as the ‘noble bandit’ righting a wrong. 6 That this is not an anachronism, imposed implausibly upon ancient conditions is confirmed by a late Roman historian, who characterised Viriatus as ‘the champion of Spain against Rome’. 7 This deferential judgement brings to mind a well-known phrase of Tacitus, which shows appreciation for Arminius’ personal qualities as ‘without doubt, the liberator of Germany’. 8 In adsertor and liberator, two unreservedly positive terms denoting a person who delivers others from a condition of arbitrarily curtailed freedom, we can clearly detect the notion of ‘righting a wrong’. What distinguished Viriatus from Arminius was success which the latter won but the former eventually lost. For almost nine years, from 147 to 139 bc, Viriatus, as leader of the resistance movement of Lusitanian and Celtiberian tribes achieved legendary fame by his successful generalship. To Spanish and German nationalists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries he ranked with Vercingetorix, Arminius, Tacfarinas and Decebalus as a symbolic figure of liberation. 34
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