A MEDITERRANEAN EMPIRE 31had some measure of literary culture, and the exercise of the intellect was
not uncommon among them’. This appraisal of the Pannonian rebels of AD
6 by the underrated contemporary historian Velleius Paterculus (2.110.4)
has puzzled modern commentators, but Tacitus would have seen the point
(and ignored the exaggeration).^25
The rebels of AD 21 were put down relatively quickly. But Romans must
have wondered whether the balance could ever be tipped permanently
against Gallic liberty. Doubts would have been confi rmed by the events of
68–70, when fi rst Iulius Vindex and then Iulius Civilis raised the banner of
revolt. The former was a provincial governor. In the account of Tacitus, the
Roman general Petillius Cerialis, eventual conqueror of Iulius Civilis,
declared before the assembled Treviri and Lingones that the gulf between
Romans and Gauls had been bridged. Gauls were in command of legions,
conquerors and conquered were partners in empire. The claims are hollow.
They would have convinced or attracted few Romans.
The pacifi cation process in the British and Gallic provinces was incomplete
in the age of Tacitus (he died in the 120s). ‘More like Italy than a province’
was the elder Pliny’s verdict on the old Gallic province of Narbonensis,
essentially the south of France ( HN 3.31). Uncertainty over Tacitus’ own
origin (south France or north Italy?) is symbolic. Almost two centuries of
occupation and pacifi cation, colonization and immigration, building on the
climatic resemblances with and physical proximity to Italy, had produced a
remarkable similarity of institutions and culture. But the rest of Gaul, and
Britain, remained essentially unchanged. Their basic structure was tribal,
not urban. But without thoroughgoing urbanization, there was no prospect
of an integrated Graeco-Roman-Celtic society.
What however of the men of Illyricum, the great central land mass of the
Balkans? We have to wait a century and a half for an appreciation of the
men who saved the Roman empire in the third century. The African Aurelius
Victor, a governor in Pannonia in the mid- fourth century, wrote: ‘Their
fatherland was Illyricum; and although they had little concern with liberal
culture, yet seasoned in the hardships of the farm and the camp, they proved
best for the state’ ( Caes. 39.26). Velleius’ educated rebels had become
Victor’s ill- educated heroes.^26
We might, in sum, have imagined that the perspective of commentators and
observers would have altered, as information on the North was acquired and
disseminated, and as Rome was seen to be making an impact on the northern
peoples. In fact, it is impossible to detect in literature any softening of attitude
or any positive response to cultural and political change in the area from north-
west Gaul and Britain to the Lower Danube. From Strabo to Cassius Dio, from
the beginning to the end of our period, the cultural elite of the empire drew a
fi rm line between what they saw as the Mediterranean core of the empire and
its barbaric periphery. In particular, the conquest of the North did not in their
view produce a broader cultural unity. Rome broadened its governmental and
cultural base, but not to the extent of assimilating the North.