Pannonia

• 1. Introduction

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  Pannonia stretched along the Danube's western bank, the Roman province Augustus once described in his own account. He wrote: 'Through Tiberius Nero, then my stepson and legate, I brought under Roman authority the Pannonian peoples, which no Roman army had approached before I became princeps and advanced the boundaries of Illyricum to the bank of the Danube.' The Danube marked its northern and eastern edge. Noricum and upper Italy lay to the west, Dalmatia and upper Moesia to the south. Its lands covered parts of today's western Hungary, western Slovakia, and eastern Austria. They also reached into northern Croatia, north-western Serbia, northern Slovenia, and northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before Rome arrived, this ground belonged to Illyrian tribes the Romans called the Pannonians. What did it take to bend that frontier to imperial rule? And why would generations of emperors keep fighting to hold it?

• 2. Tribes Before Rome

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  In the Early Iron Age, Transdanubia was home to the Pannonians, a cluster of Illyrian tribes. They gave the region its name. Celtic invaders arrived during the Late Iron Age. The Gallo-Roman historian Pompeius Trogus recorded that they met fierce local resistance. That resistance kept the Celts from overrunning the southern part of Transdanubia. Some Celtic groups pushed as far as Delphi before being turned back. The Scordisci then settled in Syrmia in 279 BC. Their arrival cut off the flow of amber reaching the Illyrians along the Amber Road. The newcomers built villages, and the most prosperous grew into oppida. Independent tribes struck their own coins, stamped with their leaders' faces. These coins were modeled first on Macedonian currency, later on Roman.

  After withdrawing into Syrmia, the Scordisci and the Dardani grew into rival powers. The Dardani raided Macedon repeatedly and built close ties with Rome. Philip V of Macedon was a vehement enemy of the Dardani. In 179 BC, he allied with the Scordisci and persuaded the Bastarnae, based at the Danube Delta, to strike into Italy. The plan aimed to weaken the Dardani along the way. Philip was then defeated by Rome in 197 BC, and the Bastarnae's own effort also failed. Even so, the Dardani's power collapsed under pressure from Macedon and the Scordisci. Perseus later destroyed them outright, opening a hundred years of Scordisci dominance across the Balkans. The historian Strabo wrote that the Scordisci pushed their raids as far as Paeonia, Illyria, and Thrace.

  Aquileia's founding in 181 BC marked Rome's first step toward taking Pannonia. The town anchored the Amber Road and served as a base for eastward campaigns. The Scordisci, allied with the Dalmatae, fought Rome as early as 156 BC. They fought again in 119 BC. Both times, the Romans failed to capture Siscia, now Sisak in Croatia, a town in a key strategic position. After these losses, Rome shifted its focus to Noricum, valued for its iron and silver mines.

  Near the end of the 2nd century BC, the Boii left northern Italy. They became a major power on the Danube. Posidonius's account, preserved through Strabo, described the migrating Cimbri being repelled first by the Boii, then the Scordisci, then the Taurisci near the Helvetii. In the early 1st century BC, the Dacians rose as the dominant regional power. Their grip on the land between the Danube and the Tisza stayed loose. In 88 BC, the consul Scipio Asiaticus crushed the Scordisci so badly that survivors retreated into eastern Syrmia. The Dacian king Burebista then defeated them, and the Boii and Taurisci too, sometime between 65 and 50 BC. Their decline let several local tribes regain independence. The territory Mithridates VI Eupator planned to cross for an invasion of Italy in 64 BC belonged to the Pannonians. He never carried out that plan. Burebista's death around 44 BC dissolved the Dacian kingdom. That left no power in the region that Rome felt bound to respect.

• 3. The Roman Conquest

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  In 35 BC, Octavian led a campaign against the Iapydes and the Pannonians. The two peoples were not longstanding enemies of Rome. Octavian captured Siscia after a month-long siege. He then occupied much of the Sava river valley. The campaign echoed Julius Caesar's unrealized plan to use the area as a base for invading Dacia. Octavian, however, mainly used the specter of a 'Dacian threat' as a pretext. It let him seize land during the Second Triumvirate.

  In 15 BC, the future emperor Tiberius defeated the Scordisci. This came after Pannonian and Scordisci raids the year before. Tiberius forced the Scordisci into alliance with Rome. These campaigns became known collectively as the Bellum Pannonicum. The Pannonians rose up in 14 BC. Vipsanius Agrippa was sent after a further rebellion in 13 BC. Agrippa died the following year, so Tiberius took over the campaign. He celebrated a triumph in 11 BC. By then, the province of Illyricum stretched from the Sava to the Adriatic Sea. A new uprising by the Pannonians and Dalmatae brought Tiberius back in 10 BC. After his victory in 9 BC, he sold captured Breuci and Amantini youths into slavery in Italy. He was honored with an ovation. His campaigns between 12 and 9 BC likely brought all of Transdanubia under Roman control, though no direct record confirms it.

  Dacian forces invaded Pannonia in 10 BC. This prompted Roman campaigns along the Danube to secure it as the imperial frontier. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus pushed operations as far as the Elbe river in 1 AD. By 10 AD, Cornelius Lentulus Augur had barred both Dacians and Sarmatians from the Danube, according to the historian Florus. Marcus Vinicius meanwhile campaigned against tribes east of the Danube Bend. He aimed to secure Roman political control there. Late in the same decade, the Marcomanni under king Maroboduus settled north of Pannonia. This prompted Augustus to plan a two-pronged attack. One force would approach from the Rhine, another under Tiberius would cross the Danube at Carnuntum.

  Tiberius had to abandon that plan and rush back in 6 AD. A fresh uprising, the Bellum Batonianum, had broken out, and it dragged on for three years. The Breuci, led by Bato the Breucian, and the Daesitiates, led by Bato the Daesitiate and Pinnes, led the revolt. Their attempt to invade Italy and Macedonia failed, so the rebels united to besiege Sirmium, now Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia. Caecina Severus broke the siege, driving the survivors into the Fruška gora mountains. He destroyed them the next year as they tried to intercept him near Siscia. Tiberius pursued a scorched-earth strategy that displeased Augustus. Augustus sent reinforcements, including Germanicus and Plautius Silvanus. Bato the Breucian surrendered in 8 AD and handed over Pinnes, becoming a Roman vassal king in return. The Daesitiates then captured and executed him and kept fighting. Silvanus finally drove Bato the Daesitiate into the Dinaric Alps, where he laid down his arms in 9 AD.

• 4. Governing The Province

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  Illyricum was split in 8 or 9 AD into Dalmatia, at first called Illyricum Superius, and Pannonia, at first called Illyricum Inferius. According to Suetonius, Tiberius's victory in the Bellum Batonianum finally subdued every people between the Danube and the Adriatic. Any calm that followed came from Illyrian exhaustion, not acceptance of Roman rule. Eligible Pannonian young men were conscripted and sent to serve in other provinces. Communities that had joined the revolt were relocated and reorganized into civitates under military watch.

  Roman occupation of Pannonia likely proceeded in stages. Certain tribes were resettled north of the Drava for strategic, not economic, reasons. Augustus arranged a supervisory alliance there, and legions were not moved into South Pannonia until his death in 14 AD. As emperor, Tiberius founded several coloniae and expanded the road network. The land's poor farmland made it hard to attract veteran settlers, and he had to put down a mutiny early in his reign. He sent his son Drusus Julius Caesar to calm the region and depose Maroboduus. This led to the rise of Vannius in 20 AD as ruler of an extended realm. Claudius later completed the occupation of Pannonia and began building the local limes.

  By 50 AD, Vannius had been overthrown by Vangio and Sido, with the emperor's backing. The nomadic Iazyges had already taken the Danube-Tisza interfluve by this point, serving as a buffer against the Dacians. Under Nero, the governor Plautius Silvanus Aelianus moved as many as 100,000 barbarians from Pannonia into Moesia. Tampius Flavianus may have settled 50,000 more inside Pannonia itself. Flavianus's governorship also saw money begin to circulate in the Barbaricum, and the limes line grew stable.

  Between 103 and 107 AD, Trajan split the province in two. Pannonia Superior held most of the urbanized land and three legions. Pannonia Inferior was essentially a border zone, with one legion and one municipium. Under Diocletian, the province was divided again into four parts. Pannonia Prima, capital Savaria, held the northwest. Pannonia Valeria, capital Sopianae, held the northeast. Pannonia Savia, capital Siscia, held the southwest, and Pannonia Secunda, capital Sirmium, held the southeast. Diocletian also transferred parts of what is now Slovenia into Noricum. In 324 AD, Constantine I pushed Pannonia's eastern border outward. His new line, called the Devil's Dykes, took in parts of modern eastern Hungary, northern Serbia, and western Romania. By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Diocese of Pannonia governed all four Pannonian provinces from its capital at Sirmium, alongside Dalmatia, Noricum Mediterraneum, and Noricum Ripense.

• 5. Frontier Wars

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  The Year of the Four Emperors, in 69 AD, passed peacefully in Pannonia itself. The governor Flavianus declared for Vespasian and marched his legions into Italy against Vitellius. Vespasian then invested heavily in the limes. The Flavian emperors broke from the old Augustan approach of keeping legions tied to their home provinces. Moving legions to the border kept them out of domestic politics while the frontier stayed calm. Money was by now circulating steadily north of the Drava, a sign that Roman civilization had settled in for good.

  Domitian's reign brought costly wars that shifted military priority to the Danube frontier. At the end of 85 or start of 86, the Dacian king Decebalus raided Moesia. He killed its governor and wiped out a legion. Domitian left Cornelius Fuscus to handle it, but Fuscus's own campaign ended in disaster and his death in 86. Tettius Julianus finally defeated Decebalus in 88, and the two sides made peace. When Domitian's later punitive expedition was repelled in 89, he still settled for lenient terms with Decebalus and turned his forces elsewhere. That same year, he held triumphs over the Dacians and the Chatti. A separate war against the Iazyges, provoked by Roman support for the Lugii, cost Rome another legion. Domitian ended that war in 92 or 93 with only an ovation.

  The creation of Roman Dacia reshaped Pannonia's frontier. It pulled the Iazyges into alliance with Rome against Decebalus during Trajan's Dacian Wars. After Trajan's death, the Iazyges joined the Roxolani and attacked in 117, killing Dacia's governor Julius Quadratus Bassus. Hadrian sent Marcius Turbo to put down the revolt. Iazyx peace envoys reached Rome by 119. War with the Quadi broke out again near the end of Hadrian's reign. His adopted son Aelius Caesar managed it until Aelius died in 138. Haterius Nepos then finished the war with a Roman victory. He became the last man ever awarded ornamenta triumphalia.

  Hoards of coins likely buried during Marcus Aurelius's reign point to real turmoil from barbarian raids. Large population movements tied to the Goths pressured Rome's client peoples. Those peoples asked for land and protection that Rome refused to grant. Distracted by the Parthian war of Lucius Verus, Rome had pulled a legion and several vexillationes out of Pannonia just before the danger became clear. The first attack came in the winter of 166-167, from the Lombards and Ubii, between Brigetio and Arrabona. Two auxiliary units repelled it. The historian Cassius Dio describes a legation of 11 tribes, led by the Marcomanni, asking the governor Iallius Bassus for peace. This was likely the last such attempt before a barbarian coalition formed against Rome.

  In 168, Marcus and Verus set up their base at Aquileia. The Marcomanni and Quadi broke through the Alps and besieged the city, burning the town of Opitergium. Verus died there during the peak of the Antonine Plague. Heavy fighting in the following years killed the governor Claudius Fronto and the praetorian prefect Macrinius Vindex. Claudius Pompeianus and future emperor Pertinax turned the tide from 172 onward. Rome forced the Quadi, then the Marcomanni, to surrender in 172-173. It crushed a winter incursion by the Iazyges in 173-174. A second war phase began in 177. Tarrutenius Paternus's campaign in 179 finally convinced the Iazyges to make peace. Cassius Dio put the occupying force sent against the Danubian Germans that year at 40,000 men, the combined garrison of both Pannonian provinces. Marcus's death in 180 ended any plan to create the provinces of Marcomannia and Sarmatia. Commodus returned instead to the old border and client system.

  Commodus strengthened the limes with new fortifications. He won further campaigns, including one led by Tigidius Perennis and another victory in 188. No attack came during the Year of the Five Emperors in 193. According to Herodian, Septimius Severus calmed the border tribes through negotiation before marching to Italy to take the throne. Pannonia's troops helped put the Severan dynasty in power. In 202, the imperial household toured the province in person. Severus's reign brought a wave of building. The road network was fully repaired, walls went up around cities, and military camps were upgraded.

• 6. Economy And Society

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  Pannonia became a genuinely productive land, especially after Probus and Galerius cleared away its great forests. Before that clearing, timber had ranked among its most valuable exports. Farmers there grew oats and barley, brewing them into a beer called sabaea. Vines and olives saw little cultivation. The province was also known for a breed of hunting dogs. Ancient writers never mention its mineral wealth directly, though it probably held iron and silver deposits.

  In Aquincum, enslaved workers won their freedom within a short time. That was an exception in a province where slavery carried less economic weight than in Rome's older territories. Wealthy civilians kept domestic slaves for housework. Soldiers granted land put slaves to work in their fields. Slaves also labored in workshops, mainly in western cities, for rich industrialists.

• 7. Religion

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  Pannonia held sanctuaries to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the empire's official gods, alongside older Celtic deities. Aquincum had its own shrine to a mother goddess. The imperial cult was practiced there too. Judaism took root in the province as well, alongside eastern mystery cults centered on Mithra, Isis, Anubis, and Serapis.

  Christianity began spreading through Pannonia in the 2nd century. It kept growing even through the harsh persecutions of the late 3rd century. Basilicas and funeral chapels went up in the 4th century, including the Church of Saint Quirinus in Savaria. Early Christian memorials survive from Aquincum, Sopianae, and Fenékpuszta. Arian Christian remains have also been found at Csopak.

• 8. Rome's Retreat

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  By the 4th century, emperor Valentinian I had ordered villas fortified and barbarian groups relocated to the border zones. Roman forces won a major victory over the Sarmatians in 358, though raids continued regardless. In 401, the Visigoths fled into the province ahead of the Huns. The peoples guarding the border fled toward Italia in turn, only to be defeated by Uldin. Uldin took Eastern Pannonia in exchange. In 433, Rome handed the entire territory over to Attila, in return for his help subduing the Burgundians then attacking Gaul.

  Flavius Aetius, magister militum of the Western Roman Empire, ceded parts of Pannonia to the Huns in 433. After the Hunnic empire collapsed in 454, Emperor Marcian settled large numbers of Ostrogoths there as foederati. The Eastern Roman Empire, under Justinian I, held southern parts of the province in the 6th century. It briefly restored a Byzantine Pannonia centered at Sirmium, though this covered only a small southeastern sliver of the old territory.

  The Avars invaded in the 560s, followed by the Slavs. The Slavs may have begun settling around the 480s but only gained independence in the 7th century. Frankish forces invaded in the 790s and reused the name 'Pannonia' for their new frontier territory, the March of Pannonia. A vassal Slavic polity called Lower Pannonia also carried the name forward. A Latin dialect that took root under Roman rule, now called Pannonian Latin, died out around the 6th century amid these successive upheavals. The name itself outlived every change of hands. It survives today in the term Pannonian plain.