ENEMIES OF ROME 57regarded as basically conquered and no longer a threat, even in those areas
where rebellion broke out soon after the initial conquest, as in Pannonia and
Dalmatia in 10 and 9 BC , in Britain under Boudicca or in Germany under
Arminius. In some regions revolts continued sporadically for years. In Africa
the Gaetulians and their allies rebelled in AD 6 and a heterogeneous group
joined the charismatic Tacfarinas in AD 24. Mauretania rebelled under
Aedemon, a freedman of the Numidian king Ptolemy, in the forties AD , and
again under Vespasian and Domitian; under Domitian the Nasamones also
rose up and defeated the governor of Numidia. It is hard to distinguish
frontier disturbances in Africa under Antoninus Pius and M. Aurelius from
the activities of bandits, but the rebellion against Pertinax in the late second
century was a major military uprising. In Gaul revolt was frequent from the
conquest by Caesar to the early Flavian period apart from a short period of
peace in the later years of Augustus, though it is debated whether the major
rebellions of the fi rst century AD , in AD 21 and AD 68, genuinely possessed or
were only ascribed a nationalistic character. In the Balkans massive revolts
between AD 6 and 9 in Pannonia and Dalmatia were subdued with great
effort but suffi cient success for no more unrest to be recorded, and in Spain
the rebellions of 26, 19 and 15 BC , which followed Augustus’ proud boast
that the province was pacifi ed, were genuinely the last fl ickers of resistance.^5
In other areas revolt was endemic. The German tribes east of the Rhine
that freed themselves from Roman rule under Arminius in AD 9 were
followed successfully by the Frisii in AD 28, and the revolt of the Batavi
under Civilis in AD 69 seems to have been defused eventually only by the
grant of concessions. Less successful were the Jews, whose two national
revolts in Judaea ended in disaster in AD 70 and AD 135; no less sanguinary
were the uprisings by diaspora Jews in Cyrene, Egypt, Cyprus and
Mesopotamia in the last years of Trajan. Even regions that had endured
Roman rule in peace for decades or even centuries could erupt unexpectedly,
as in the stasis in Lycia in AD 43 (Dio 60.17.3) and the insurrection in the
Egyptian countryside in AD 152 that cost the life of the prefect of Egypt.^6
The example of successful rebellions and memories of past independence
encouraged such revolts, and it is a mistake to think of all of them as lost
causes. It seems likely that the greater tendency of frontier zones to rebel
was due to a correct belief that Roman forces might be more willing to leave
them free. In the East neither Armenia nor Mesopotamia remained under
Roman control for long, and the ability of tribes in Scotland to repel the
legions gave other northern Britons hope, as did the free state of Maroboduus,
which the people of Dalmatia and Pannonia tried to emulate in the early
fi rst century. Provincials knew that there were alternatives to Roman rule,
not just in distant China, India and Parthia, but in kingdoms closer to home:
the Garamantes on the desert fringe in Africa and peoples listed by the early
second century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, such as Meroe, south of
Egypt, and the Axumite state in Abyssinia.^7 They were also suffi ciently
attuned to imperial politics to take advantage of Roman weakness,