CAESAR'S PROVINCES

The beginnings of Caesar's involvement in northeast Italy date to the assumption of his provincial command in early 58 bc, which included Illyricum, along with Gaul (first Cisalpine, later Transalpine too).Footnote ² As the readers of the Commentarii know, that region had a peripheral role in Caesar's concerns for the best part of his tenure. This was probably not in keeping with the plans that he had devised before taking office. Caesar's initial intention may well have been to devote the early phase of his command to the campaigns in Illyricum, with a view to addressing the threat presented by the attack led by the Getan chief Burebista.Footnote ³ Whatever plans Caesar may have had for northeast Italy at the beginning of his provincial tenure, the irruption of the Helvetii into Transalpine Gaul changed the picture, and led him to divert three legions that had been quartered in the vicinity of Aquileia (originally a Latin colony, since 90 bc a municipium) to the Gallic front.Footnote ⁴ Caesar made time for regular visits to the region, during the winter breaks of the Gallic campaign. In the winter of 57/56 he embarked on a journey to ‘Italy and Illyricum’, which he apparently had to cut short to address a military crisis in Transalpine Gaul.Footnote ⁵ The choice of words is significant: its clear implication is that Caesar viewed Cisalpine Gaul as part of Italia, regardless of its provincial status.

That was a time of fluid definitions of complex territorial and regional entities. It is not quite clear, for example, how Illyricum should be understood at this point in time, and what its territorial limits may have been. As Ronald Syme pointed out, there is no evidence for the status of Illyricum as a free-standing province before Caesar's governorship, and it is not apparent that it had a clearly defined position vis-à-vis Cisalpine Gaul either.Footnote ⁶ Most of the ancient sources stress that Illyricum was part of the brief that Caesar received under the lex Vatinia of 59 bc, and that is hard to dispute. Seeking a clear definition of the boundaries of the province, however, is not just difficult, but utterly unhelpful.Footnote ⁷ For much of the Republican period, provincial commands were tasks that had a loose territorial connotation, and did not necessarily map out on precisely defined boundaries, nor did they entail that a given territory had been annexed to the Roman dominions.Footnote ⁸ On the basis of the surviving evidence, it is not far-fetched to argue that the addition of Illyricum to Cisalpina had an essentially preventive nature, and gave Caesar scope to carry out military operations beyond northeast Italy. It also afforded him the chance to take a stronger interest in the predicament of the conuentus of Roman citizens on the coast of Dalmatia in what was not a fully stable context.Footnote ⁹

Many of the most valuable modern treatments of the problem, from A. Degrassi's great book on Italy's confine orientale to M. Šašel Kos’ studies of Appian's Illyrian Wars, focus either on boundaries or on annexations (Degrassi, Reference Degrassi1954; Šašel Kos, Reference Šašel Kos2005); the following discussion will largely steer clear of those issues. Caesar's Illyrian province no doubt changed focus over the years. There was a shift from the initial intention of conducting a military campaign in those parts to a less ambitious operation. A Greek inscription from Salona in Dalmatia records the visit of a mission of envoys of the neighbouring community of Tragurium to Aquileia, where they met Caesar on 3 March 56.Footnote ¹⁰ In early 54, after carrying out some administrative work in the conuentus of Cisalpine Gaul, he carried out a mission into Illyricum, because he had been receiving reports of a military attack on the region by the Pirustae.Footnote ¹¹ The way in which his intervention unfolded indicates that the Roman military presence in that territory was negligible: Caesar's first step was to organize a levy among the Illyrian communities that had demanded his intervention. This was sufficient to prompt reassurances from the Pirustae, who firmly committed to withdrawing and to offering a full redress, and secured an appeasement that Caesar oversaw before setting out back to Cisalpine Gaul. Caesar compresses the accounts of these proceedings within the opening chapter of book 5, and does not make clear where they took place. The reference to his move back into Cisalpine Gaul suggests that they did not occur at Aquileia, and that Caesar used a base somewhere further east.Footnote ¹² That the problem found a temporary solution is confirmed by Caesar's apparent decision not to come back to the region in the following year.

In early 52 Caesar carried out his routine journey to Cisalpine Gaul, where he also had to face a situation that was anything but routine: news of Clodius’ death and of the senatus consultum that provided for mass recruitment across Italy reached him, and he conducted a general dilectus in his province, before going back to Transalpine Gaul to face the final stint of the campaign.Footnote ¹³ Those were exceptional times, and they required exceptional choices. In 50 he broke the usual pattern of his tenure and came to Italy during the spring, leaving the winter quarters that he had presided over in Transalpine Gaul, and devoted his time to an important task: a tour of the municipia and colonies (both categories of settlements are duly mentioned) in which he sponsored the candidacy of his quaestor M. Antonius for the augurate.Footnote ¹⁴ The author of book 8 of the Commentarii candidly states that blocking Antony's election would have afforded Caesar's enemies the opportunity to undermine his standing in Rome.Footnote ¹⁵ Caesar's direct intervention also suggests that there was a sufficiently high number of Roman citizens in those parts to make that canvassing effort worthwhile, regardless of the provincial status of Cisalpine Gaul. Caesar decided to embark on his tour even after he heard that Antony had actually been elected. The source expands on the range of honours and support that he received across the province, where he was hailed as the victor of the campaign uniuersae Galliae: the celebration united adults and children, the rich and the poor, and was foreshadowing the joy of a triumph that was fully within the range of reasonable expectation (ut uel exspectatissimi triumphi laetitia praecipi posset, ‘so as to anticipate, if possible, the joy of the triumph, so long expected’, 8.51.3).Footnote ¹⁶ Its relevance in a political context in which Caesar's victory was being contested in Rome is obvious.

There is just no room for the Illyrian front in this framework. We should not assume, of course, that the diffuse account of the Commentarii is either comprehensive or reliable. Omissions and oddities in the narrative occasionally emerge.Footnote ¹⁷ Nowhere in the Commentarii do we find a reference to the military operations carried out at Castellum Larignum, a fortress in the Carnic region, between Aquileia and Virunum, which Caesar besieged when the inhabitants refused to provide him with supplies.Footnote ¹⁸ We know about this episode from Vitruvius, who mentioned it in his account of building materials. When Caesar gave orders to set fire to a watchtower, he marvelled at the endurance of the material of which it was built: larchwood. The fortress was eventually conquered, but that moment marked the beginning of a trade in larchwood from that Alpine site to the Po Valley and the Adriatic coast. Jaroslav Šašel tentatively dated this episode to the early stages of Caesar's provincial command, since that was the time at which Caesar could rely on the largest contingent of troops in northern Italy, but the argument, as he conceded, is merely conjectural.Footnote ¹⁹

Developments at Tergeste (Trieste) are another instructive case in point. At B Gall. 8.24 we are told that in the winter of 52/51 Caesar sent the Fifteenth Legion, led by T. Labienus, from Transalpine Gaul into Cisalpina, in order to protect ‘the colonies of Roman citizens’ (coloniae ciuium Romanorum) and avoid the attacks of the ‘barbarians’ of the sort that had befallen the inhabitants of Tergeste in the previous summer.Footnote ²⁰ There is no mention of this episode in book 7, and no evidence for any response by Caesar or his associates to the attack in 52; we are not told, in fact, how the people of Tergeste had managed to overcome that threat. We are presented with a brief hint to the predicament of a community in a lengthy and complex account that has an altogether different focus.Footnote ²¹

This cursory, somewhat clumsy, reference happens to be the earliest mention of Tergeste in the literary tradition. It is problematic in several respects. On the one hand, it shows that Tergeste was already in existence by 52 bc; on the other, it does not make clear what its legal status was. The author of book 8 of the Commentarii states (§24) that Caesar sent off troops in order to defend the coloniae ciuium Romanorum in the province. This does not show beyond reasonable doubt that Tergeste had colonial status. There is a distinct possibility that the writer may not be quite accurate here: he was well aware of the distinction between municipia and coloniae, as we have seen, but there is no apparent reason why the colonies would have been at greater risk, or would have been more worth protecting, than the municipia.Footnote ²² One may even see a contrast being drawn here between the predicament of Tergeste and that of the coloniae. On the other hand, Appian refers to Tergeste as a Ῥωμαίων ἄποικος, an expression behind which one may reasonably read a reference to a Roman colony, and Strabo as a φρούριον, which must translate castellum.Footnote ²³ Both labels seem to encourage the view that Tergeste was a settlement with a distinctive military function, possibly related to its control over the stretch of sea that is now known as the Gulf of Trieste. Elsewhere in his geographical work, however, Strabo refers to Tergeste as a κώμη Καρνική: a settlement that does not even appear to have the status of a city, and was linked with the Carni, a community of Celtic descent that hailed from the inland area, and indeed from the Alps, and had been expanding its presence towards the coastal region in the late second and early first centuries bc.Footnote ²⁴ As is the case elsewhere, Strabo appears to be recording conflicting traditions on the same issue at different stages of his discussion.Footnote ²⁵ Strabo's contradictory statements on the status of Tergeste may be explained with a gradual political and urban development: the κώμη he mentions in book 7 was no doubt a part of the territory of Aquileia that later acquired an autonomous status. This specific problem reminds us of the perils posed by the necessity to work on late and derivative evidence. The caveat also applies, in a different way, to the evidence of the Elder Pliny that we shall discuss below. On the other hand, contemporary evidence is not necessarily a better source of information. The Commentarii are close in time to the events they deal with, but, as we have just seen, are not immune from bias and omissions. While they give an overall sense of what place northeast Italy had in Caesar's concerns, they are no more than a starting-point to the understanding of what he may have set out to achieve in the area. More evidence and different standpoints must be brought into the picture.

POLITICAL CHOICES, BOUNDARIES AND KNOWLEDGE GAPS

The uncertainty about the early history and status of Tergeste is indicative of a broader pattern: a number of important aspects of the history of northeast Italy in the first century bc are very poorly attested. A brief inventory may be helpful, before we turn to areas for which better evidence survives.

Strabo's reference to Tergeste as a ‘Carnic village’ has the merit of reminding us of the enduring significance of non-Roman elements in the region well into the late Republican period: an issue that is as under-documented as it is important. Rome's dealings with the Carni date back (at the latest) to the 170s bc, the time of the campaigns that were carried out against the Histri and the Iapydes, who sought to establish ties with Rome during the mission of C. Cassius Longinus.Footnote ²⁶ There is no reason to think that the presence of the Carni at Tergeste attested by Strabo was determined by a strong and carefully planned military offensive; there are instances, notably in southern Italy, of colonies that gradually attracted robust contingents of inhabitants from neighbouring indigenous communities.Footnote ²⁷ The fundamental historical question — when was Tergeste founded, and by whom — is bound to remain unanswered on the available evidence. The suggestion of Ruggero Fauro Rossi (Reference Rossi2008: 247–50), who argued for the creation of a settlement of Carni promoted by the Romans after their campaign against the Histri of 178–177 bc, is plausible but strongly conjectural.

That Tergeste was in a significant strategic position is confirmed by a brief reference in Velleius, who mentions a confinium, a line of defence joining Tergeste and the uicus of Nauportus (modern Vrhnika, in Slovenia, on the river Ljubljanica), in his account of a planned migration of Pannonian rebels to Italy in ad 6.Footnote ²⁸ The importance of the area around Tergeste had also been made apparent by recent military developments. Appian speaks of two attacks of the Iapydes on the region, twenty years apart, both of which had grave consequences for the Romans.Footnote ²⁹ One is probably the attack of 52 bc that is mentioned briefly in book 8 of the Commentarii, and the second is that of the campaign that Octavian undertook in 35. Recent findings at Grad near Reka, Gradišče in Cerkno and Vrh gradu near Pečine (western Slovenia) have shown evidence for military activity in the late Republican period, which is probably to be linked with Octavian's mission.Footnote ³⁰ However, the geographical remit of the attack that was launched on Tergeste in 52 bc is not quite clear. The wording of the passage of Appian that appears to allude to it does not rule out the possibility that Aquileia was also attacked in 52. That would have made Caesar's military response even more urgent, but would also make the silence of book 8 of the Commentarii harder to account for.

There are other significant gaps in our knowledge of the developments in northeast Italy in this period. The narrative of Appian in the Illyrian Wars has of course a different viewpoint and covers different material from that of the Commentarii. Like Caesar's account, it lacks precision and detail in a number of important respects. Appian also discusses the situation in Liburnia, an area corresponding to the region of the Kvarner Gulf, and records an appeal for help to Caesar from the city of Promona (near modern Drniš), which was attacked by the Illyrians and the Dalmatians; in 50 bc Caesar sent a contingent that was defeated by the Illyrians.Footnote ³¹ The outbreak of the Civil War dissuaded him from taking the matter any further. The region had already played a part in the history of the late Republican civil wars, and Caesar's interest in its stability becomes somewhat less surprising against that background. In the winter of 85/84 Cinna and Carbo established a military base in Liburnia, where they were hoping to concentrate a large amount of the troops that they had been recruiting across Italy with a view to launching an offensive against Sulla.Footnote ³² The plan was drawn to a sudden close by the mutiny in which Cinna was killed. Caesar's attempt to restore some order in that area at a time when a civil conflict was imminent may have borne some relationship (surely not just circumstantial) with that precedent. Liburnia's strategic importance in controlling the North Adriatic must have been apparent to Caesar, and the precedent of Cinna's failed plan is likely to have alerted him further to the potential significance to the wider development of the war. Had that area fallen into the hands of his enemies, this would have considerably complicated his strategy in Italy.

Another important gap in the surviving evidence is made apparent by a fragmentary inscription from Elleri/Jelerje, in northwest Histria (unfortunately without a meaningful archaeological context), in which the word municipi[---] appears.Footnote ³³ There has been intense debate regarding the community to which this inscription pertains, and whether it is Tergeste (the legal status of which is however uncertain, as we have seen) or the town of Agida, which is attested exclusively by a passage of the Elder Pliny as an oppidum ciuium Romanorum, ‘town of Roman citizens’, and the location of which is unknown.Footnote ³⁴ The lettering of the inscription points to a late Republican date.Footnote ³⁵ Augusto Fraschetti (Reference Fraschetti1975) argued that the inscription from Elleri refers to the municipium of Agida, presumably created in the age of Caesar, or shortly before. Others have attributed the inscription (with varying degrees of conviction) to the pertica of Aquileia. According to Vanna Vedaldi Iasbez, Pliny's passage does not prove that Agida had municipal status; moreover, in her view the account of Histria at HN 3.129 does not follow the Augustan discriptio Italiae (‘subdivision of Italy’), but is based on an earlier treatment, possibly by Varro.Footnote ³⁶

This argument requires a certain leap of faith, and it is doubtful whether a safe conclusion may be reached on the sources of this section of the Natural History. At any rate, Pliny mentions Agida at the beginning of a list of cities of Histria. It is followed by Parentium, Pola, Nesactium, and the sequence ends with the Arsia (modern Arsa/Rasa), which Pliny singles out as the boundary of Italy in his own day (nunc).Footnote ³⁷ Boundaries, as was mentioned in passing earlier, have often been the focus of modern discussion and speculation. That is unsurprising in light of the history of the region in the twentieth century, and to some extent warranted by the ancient evidence for a change of boundaries in northeast Italy at the very end of the Republican period. In Pliny's overview Histria is included in the official discriptio of Italy. The list is likely to derive from an Augustan source, and it is conceivable that the boundary was moved eastwards to the Arsia in that period.Footnote ³⁸ At any rate, Pliny also records the existence of an earlier boundary of Italy, the river Formio, which he places 6 miles east of Tergeste: he defines it as anticus [sic] auctae Italiae terminus, nunc uero Histriae (‘the ancient boundary of the enlarged Italy, now indeed of Histria’, HN 3.127). The Formio may be identified either with the Risano/Rizana, or with the Rio Ospo, which are both rivers about 10 km east of Tergeste.Footnote ³⁹ The exact location of the boundary is a matter of relative significance: what is abundantly clear is that at some point in the late Republican period it was set in the hinterland of Tergeste, and was moved at a later time. Vedaldi Iasbez (Reference Vedaldi Iasbez1994: 125) has noted that the river Arsia marked a much more obvious natural boundary than the Formio: immediately to the east the Mounts Caldiera (Ćićarija/Ciceria and Učka/Monte Maggiore) divide Histria from Liburnia. After the inclusion of Histria into Italia, the Formio retained its significance as the northwestern boundary of the region.Footnote ⁴⁰ However, there is no evidence that Histria had a clear territorial definition back in the day when it was assigned as a province to a Roman promagistrate in the Republican period.Footnote ⁴¹

The emphasis on fluvial boundaries stands out as a distinctive aspect of this dossier. This reveals a fundamental bias of our evidence: it reflects the viewpoint of outsiders who reach and gain control of that region from the coast, and gradually make their way inland, while retaining a strong focus on the coastal area.Footnote ⁴² Much as the bora — the ghastly northeasterly wind that often blows in the upper Adriatic — could present a significant challenge to navigation, a substantial part of the contacts between Histria and northeast Italy took place by sea, whether on long-distance routes, especially from Aquileia, or by coasting navigation, the safer piccolo cabotaggio method that is widely attested throughout the history of Histria.Footnote ⁴³ In the setting provided by an ‘especially hospitable’ coast such as that of west Histria, rich in natural ports, the development of a coastal site such as the one for which scant attestations of material culture have emerged from the rescue excavations at Sermin, near Koper/Capodistria, becomes explicable in the second century bc.Footnote ⁴⁴ It is not necessary to envisage a clearly defined legal status for a settlement of this kind, which may have just served the purpose of a commercial outpost. At any rate, no archaeological evidence has been identified for the political centre of the settlement, or indeed for any of its ‘structural remains’ (Horvat, Reference Horvat1997: 117).

We are therefore presented with several areas where we face uncertainty and indeed, in some respects, sheer ignorance: the relations between Romans and indigenous communities; the early history of Tergeste; the location and status of Agida; and the background of the redefinition of the boundaries of Italy. Recognizing the existence of these gaps and stressing their significance is an important part of the historical reconstruction of the developments in northeast Italy in this period. We shall now turn to areas for which better evidence survives.

CAESAR AND HISTRIA

While a firm solution is not at hand on the problem of boundaries, there is some scope for progress if one chooses to focus instead on whatever little evidence survives for the communities that were enclosed within those boundaries. Parentium and the colony of Pola are the cities that are mentioned after Agida in Pliny's list (HN 3.129). Pliny's passage is the earliest evidence for the existence of Parentium (Poreč/Parenzo), on the west coast of Histria. There is some inscriptional and archaeological evidence from that site, but positive information on the date of its foundation and early legal status is lacking.

Pola (modern Pula/Pola, on the southern tip of the Histrian peninsula) is a more promising case. Pliny labels it a colonia, hence giving some welcome clarity on its juridical status; he also records the official names of the community, Pietas Iulia.Footnote ⁴⁵ The city is in a felicitous position, at the head of a natural harbour. Strabo probably misunderstands a passage of Callimachus in linking its foundation with the arrival of the Colchians in Illyricum, after the failure of their pursuit of Jason and Medea, and frames that account with a flattering description of the site where the city lies — a gulf with islands that provided good mooring places and fertile land.Footnote ⁴⁶ At the outset of book 5, he also singles out Pola as the terminal point of Italy, hence giving it the same function as the river Varus in Liguria.Footnote ⁴⁷ Elsewhere he points out that the Histrians are the first people on the Illyrian coast and that their country is a continuation of Italy; for that reason ‘the present rulers’ have decided to expand the boundaries of Italy as far as Pola.Footnote ⁴⁸ Strabo provides no information, however, on the recent history of the city, nor does he shed light on the circumstances that led to the bestowal of its colonial status. The use of the plural (οἱ νῦν ἡγεμόνες) has led scholars, from Mommsen to Pais and Degrassi, to produce a range of chronological hypotheses: the triumviral period, an intervention of Augustus and Agrippa, and a joint measure of Augustus and Tiberius (Degrassi, Reference Degrassi1954: 54–60; Vedaldi Iasbez, Reference Vedaldi Iasbez1994: 255).

The date of the foundation of the colony has also received much discussion. Degrassi identified the battle of Philippi as a terminus post quem; on his interpretation, the name Pietas Iulia was a pointed reference to the revenge upon the assassins of Octavian's adoptive father.Footnote ⁴⁹ Fraschetti persuasively pointed out that nothing in those epithets excluded a Caesarian dating: pietas was a powerful catchword in the age of the Dictator, as the coinage of the period illustrates.Footnote ⁵⁰ In fact, the case for viewing Pola as a Caesarian colony is compelling, and has found widespread acceptance over the last three decades.Footnote ⁵¹ The inscription from the arch of Porta Ercole (or Herculea) records the names of two duouiri: L. Cassius Longinus and L. Calpurnius Piso.Footnote ⁵² Both men were worthy political players: Cassius was the brother of the Caesaricide, and Calpurnius had been consul in 58 bc and was the father-in-law of Caesar himself.Footnote ⁵³ The presence of two prominent figures was explained by Degrassi with their decision to settle in Histria, respectively to withdraw to private life after the amnesty and in order to enjoy a quiet retirement in pleasant surroundings. However, the relatively high standing of these two characters prompts a different reconstruction, as suggested independently by both Fraschetti (Reference Fraschetti1983: 90–102) and Lawrence Keppie (Reference Keppie1983: 204): they are likely to have been directly involved with the foundation of the colony.

Calpurnius Piso had been duouir at Capua in 58 bc, in the aftermath of the passing of the lex Iulia agraria.Footnote ⁵⁴ He had therefore played an important part in the implementation of agrarian plans devised by Caesar: a precedent that must have carried some weight. He was by then a man of considerable experience: Cicero points out that he was ‘a grown boy’ (grandis iam puer) at the time of the Social War.Footnote ⁵⁵ Nothing in whatever little is known about the career of L. Cassius Longinus proves that he was in favour with Antony or Octavian after the Ides of March, even though he could have benefited from the amnesty. His cursus honorum did not go beyond the tribunate of the plebs, which he held in 44 bc, in the same year in which his brother Gaius held the praetorship. By then they both were under the patronage of Caesar. In this scenario, the most plausible solution is a foundation promoted by Caesar, and carried out by the duouiri Calpurnius Piso and Cassius Longinus. One of them was a distinguished consularis, who already had direct experience of land assignments; the other one had been a legate of Caesar in the Pharsalus campaign. He also happened to be a descendant of that C. Cassius Longinus who had ravaged the territory of the Carni, Iapydes and Histri in 171 bc. It is possible that this background might have played a part in steering Caesar's choice to recruit him.Footnote ⁵⁶ It is also apparent that the Cassii Longini retained a connection with the region in the decades following the foundation of Pola: a L. Cassius Longinus, possibly the consul of ad 11, is mentioned as the patron of the freedman L. Cassius Phoebus on a tombstone from Tergeste.Footnote ⁵⁷

At any rate, the presence of Calpurnius Piso and Cassius Longinus at Pola must be narrowed down quite specifically to the period between 47 and 45, that is, between the aftermath of Pharsalus and the election of Longinus to the tribunate; Calpurnius Piso's involvement with Roman politics after the Ides of March is also well documented.Footnote ⁵⁸ The choice of these two prominent individuals may thus be read as a clear symptom of Caesar's intention to secure the success and prominence of the foundation of Pola. We are not in a position to state how exceptional it was, since the names of the duouiri that carried out comparable foundations are unknown.Footnote ⁵⁹ The choice to display the image of Hercules on the city gate might also point to a connection with Caesar, who is sometimes linked with Hercules in the literary tradition, although the cult of Hercules is attested at Pola, Tergeste, Salona, and more widely across Dalmatia, and appears to pre-date the Roman conquest.Footnote ⁶⁰

The question must be asked as to what factors made that foundation so attractive. Unlike Tergeste or Aquileia, Pola is a site of relatively minor significance to the land defence of northeast Italy, although it plays, of course, an important strategic role in the control of the Upper Adriatic.Footnote ⁶¹ Strabo notes that the fertility of the countryside near Pola was a distinctive feature of the region (5.1.9), and it is unsurprising to find impressive evidence for centuriation across the ager of the colony, and beyond (we shall come back to that point in the following section). The foundation of Pola, therefore, is likely to have addressed two needs: providing a cohort of settlers with fertile land in an attractive location, and consolidating the Roman presence in the north Adriatic. In the shorter term, it may have also played a strategic function during the war against Pompey: control over a naval base in the northern part of the Adriatic, at a reasonably close range from the Italian coast, might have proved helpful, as the episode from the age of Cinna mentioned above suggests.Footnote ⁶² Unfortunately, evidence for the allegiances of the communities in Histria, Liburnia and Dalmatia during the Civil War is also lacking.Footnote ⁶³ One isolated exception is worth noting. Lucan depicts the tragic end that a cohort of Caesarian supporters from Opitergium met after the defeat of Caesar's fleet at the island of Curicta (Krk/Veglia) in the Kvarner Gulf: when they realized that there was no hope of a successful counterattack, they decided to commit suicide en masse (4.474–520). This episode suggests that the loyalty of the communities in Histria during the war may have tended to be with the Pompeian camp, but it would be unwise to draw general conclusions from a single incident for which the only source is an epic poem.Footnote ⁶⁴

ADMINISTRATIVE AND AGRARIAN CHANGE

It is doubtful whether Caesar had any interest in promoting the foundation of the colony of Pola as a way to expand the boundaries of Cisalpine Gaul, or whether the settlement of the colony is proof that Histria belonged within the province. The keen interest of much of modern scholarship in establishing whether the foundation of Pola was carried out in Cisalpine Gaul or in Illyricum is arguably misplaced.Footnote ⁶⁵ Wider considerations of Caesar's desire to Romanize an area that had until then been on the fringes of the Roman dominions, or the opposite view that the foundation of a colony presupposes a high level of Romanization or acculturation in the region, are best left out of account.Footnote ⁶⁶ It is preferable to understand the foundation of the colony against the backdrop of whatever little evidence survives for other contemporary developments in the region. As we have seen, the history of Parentium in this period is unknown, and there is no compelling reason to envisage the creation of a municipium by Caesar on that site.Footnote ⁶⁷ The epitaph of the veteran L. Vinusius of the legio VIIII Triumphalis from Vižinada/Visinada, about ten miles northeast of Poreč/Parenzo, suggests the possibility that some soldiers who had fought under Caesar and taken part in his triumph were eventually settled in that area.Footnote ⁶⁸ The surviving record does not get much more instructive if one moves further north. There is no evidence for Caesar's dealings with Tergeste, and the view that it was one of his colonial foundations has no ground.Footnote ⁶⁹

Caesar, however, took a direct interest in other parts of northeast Italy. At least two foundations may be safely attributed to him, both in connection with the presence of the Carni in the region: Forum Iulii (Cividale del Friuli) and Iulium Carnicum (Zuglio). However, important details on these settlements are also lacking.Footnote ⁷⁰ Forum Iulium had evidently the status of a small settlement, a forum. It is likely, but far from certain, that it was established as such by Caesar; it may have been granted municipal status in 49 bc.Footnote ⁷¹ Iulium Carnicum probably had a more specific military function. The neuter gender of the toponym suggests that the settlement was originally a forum, or rather a castellum, but by the mid-first century bc it certainly was a uicus.Footnote ⁷² The epigraphic evidence shows that the territory of the community encompassed a large geographical remit.Footnote ⁷³ Several sites in the neighbouring area show the presence of military outposts that date to the first century bc, and mostly developed further in the Imperial period: at Amaro-Maleit, Monte Sorantri, and especially Verzegnis.Footnote ⁷⁴ At the same time, the site of Iulium Carnicum itself enabled control over a route leading up to Noricum, notably via the Passo di Monte Croce Carnico — a mountain pass that was also accessible from Forum Iulii and, indirectly, from Aquileia.Footnote ⁷⁵

Other factors, however, made Histria an even more rewarding focus of interest for Caesar. There is valuable evidence for the agrarian set-up of the peninsula, and especially of the territory of Pola, in this period, from which important historical implications may be drawn. That the territory around Pola clearly bears the traces of a centuriation grid, which displays a remarkable extent of continuity from the Roman period, was elegantly proved in the pioneering work of the great Triestine antiquarian Pietro Kandler, who drew up a detailed map of the pertica of Pola.Footnote ⁷⁶ It is tempting, and indeed reasonable, to link the creation of this centuriation grid with the foundation of the colony and, therefore, with Caesar's impact on Histria. The agrarian landscape of Pola is one of the best-known instances of centuriation in the whole of Roman Italy, powerfully illustrated in the map that Plinio Fraccaro drew up for the Mostra Augustea della Romanità of 1937, now on display at the Museo della Civiltà Romana in Rome. The study that John Bradford conducted on the aerial photographs taken by the RAF allowed an even more comprehensive appreciation of the historic landscape of the Histrian peninsula, which linked the study of the agrarian features with that of road networks (Bradford, Reference Bradford1957: 175–93). From the outcome of that project and from the studies of Raymond Chevallier it became apparent that the pattern of centuriation is not confined to the territory of Pola, but reaches far into that of Parentium (Chevallier, Reference Chevallier1961; Reference Chevallier1983: 67–9). According to Chevallier's estimate, about 750 centuriae of 20 actus each are safely attested in the ager of Pola, while about 100 are still extant in that of Parentium.

Much of the recent debate has concentrated on the relationship between the centuriation grids in the territories of both communities. Gérard Chouquer (Reference Chouquer2007) has argued, on the basis of evidence drawn from Google Earth, that the grid in the territory of Parentium is aligned along a different frame from that of Pola, and has inferred that the two grids relate to two different efforts. However, the recent full-scale reconsideration of the agrarian landscape of Histria by Antonio Marchiori has sketched a more reliable and considerably different picture, in which there is abundant evidence for continuity of centuriation between Pola and Parentium.Footnote ⁷⁷ The grid encompasses the whole range of the territories between the two agri, notably between the Leme Canal and the river Quieto, without being confined to the more obviously rewarding portions of the territory, such as the coast; a firm separation between colonists and indigenous population should not be readily assumed.Footnote ⁷⁸ In an unpublished paper, Davor Bulić has recently developed Marchiori's insight further: the centuriations of the territories of the two communities are likely to have been carried out at the same time.Footnote ⁷⁹

These conclusions in turn raise significant questions. First, if the territories of two communities were given the same centurial set-up, it is worth asking what relationship this had to the foundation of the colony of Pola, and what the implications of this are for the juridical status and the early history of Parentium. Pliny's testimony, which differentiates between the status of Pola as colonia and that of Parentium as oppidum, remains a hurdle to the hypothesis of a contemporaneous foundation. A possibility is worth entertaining: the ager around Parentium may have been centuriated along with that of Pola without a new administrative centre, whether of municipal or colonial status, being founded at the site of Parentium; that may have remained home for some time to a loosely organized settlement of Roman citizens included within the territory of Pola.Footnote ⁸⁰

Moreover, the extent to which the centurial grid persisted around Pola and around Parentium respectively tells a different story. As Marchiori (Reference Marchiori2009: 88–94; Reference Marchiori2010: 99–126) points out, the use of the rural territory in Parentium followed very different lines from that of Pola, leading to a far less noticeable extent of continuity of the Roman structures. This issue would take us well beyond the period to which the present discussion is devoted and to the historical developments in Histria between the Middle Ages and the early modern period; it therefore cannot be pursued here for reasons of space.

A third problem remains unresolved: the relationship between Pola, where the traces of a Roman foundation are clearly attested, and the neighbouring site of Nesactium, which is usually associated with the history of the Histrian peninsula before the coming of Rome and whose juridical status is unclear. Robert Matijašić, for instance, has suggested that Nesactium was a municipium without ager, virtually an enclave within the territory of Pola.Footnote ⁸¹ The uncertainties over the status of Nesactium reflect a wider problem, which, like the centuriation of the territory of the city, has long been closely related to thorny political and historical controversies: that of the relationship and the power balance between the Roman conquerors and the indigenous population. The evidence is on the whole too scanty to enable safe conclusions, and much of the debate tends to unhelpfully confuse the Roman military and political presence with the category of ‘Romanization’.Footnote ⁸² The apparent dearth of indigenous names in the scarce epigraphic evidence for the early history of the colony of Pola has prompted the leading authority on the history of Roman Histria to argue that the colonial foundation was accompanied by an ‘ethnic cleansing’ strategy by the Romans, which caused the removal of the indigenous element from the territory of the city and its marginalization into peripheral and less fertile areas.Footnote ⁸³ The minimal survival rate of the evidence for Pola — which is partly matched by the evidence at Parentium — should warn against drawing rash conclusions. It is crucial not to transpose the developments of the mid-1940s to the forties of the first century bc.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN HISTRIA

Advocating a more cautious approach to the impact of the colony of Pola on the indigenous population does not of course amount to denying that it had significant repercussions on the territorial and agrarian structures of the peninsula. The sheer scale of centuriation is a strong indicator of that, and is not the only major shift that occurred at the time. Histria had long been a land of castellieri, notably of sites that were organized around hilltops: the most recent overview has counted 423 sites.Footnote ⁸⁴ The coming of Rome led to a shift from hilltop settlements to lowland ones, and to a gradual crisis of the castellieri model of settlement: the pace and intensity of that crisis, however, remains to be fully explored, and scope must be allowed for a degree of local differentiation.Footnote ⁸⁵ The colonization of Pola and its rural hinterland introduced a framework that shifted the balance from the hilltops to the plain, and paved the way for a pattern of widely distributed landownership. The potential that this new framework afforded was not fully realized: within a couple of generations Histria became home to a considerable number of large estates, many of which were part of the Imperial patrimonium.Footnote ⁸⁶ If there was a serious attempt to create sizeable clusters of small landownership in order to provide for the settlers of Caesar's colony (whether veterans or civilians), it does not appear to have lasted much beyond the space of a generation. In a way, this is a function of the attractiveness of the location at which the colony was created. However, the presence of two levels of elites — an exceptionally wealthy imperial aristocracy and the decurional elite dwarfed by it — is a distinctive feature of the social history of the region throughout the Imperial period.Footnote ⁸⁷

The agricultural landscape of Histria has some original features that make it stand out in comparison with similar regions in the Mediterranean context. It is not just exceptionally fertile, with abundance, in the central and southern sectors, of highly productive terra rossa, a reddish sticky clay that enables a remarkable range of cultivations, especially vineyards and olive trees, sustaining a thriving long-distance trade circuit with which the emperors were directly involved.Footnote ⁸⁸ The coastline was also home to salt-making and fish-salting plants, and structures for the production of purple, typically based on extensive villa sites.Footnote ⁸⁹ As we have already seen, the west coast of Histria presents a number of natural ports, which played an important role in the trade within the peninsula, in the circulation of goods from site to site, from villa to villa, in a system that had its centre in the port of Pola, as a hub for long-distance trade.Footnote ⁹⁰ Communications between the coastal areas and the inland regions were secured by rivers, first and foremost the Ningus (Mirna/Quieto), in the north of the peninsula.Footnote ⁹¹ It is not surprising to find evidence for such a strong effort at organizing the rural territory around the colony — the extension of which, in relation with the urban site, is considerable and virtually unparalleled in the context of the eastern Adriatic, except at Parentium.Footnote ⁹²

Unfortunately, the site of the colony itself provides hardly any evidence dating to the age of Caesar: the Porta Herculea, with its inscription of the first duouiri, aside, the earliest features of the monumental landscape of the city date to the last quarter of the first century bc.Footnote ⁹³ That is also the case with the temple recently excavated at the site of San Teodoro in Pula, probably dedicated to Hercules. The large amounts of oil and wine amphorae that have been discovered in the immediate vicinity of the temple, in the foundations of a portico and a courtyard, however, yield a clue as to the scale of the production and trade activity in the immediate aftermath of the foundation of Pola.Footnote ⁹⁴ Charting the social rise of the local notables in the generations immediately following the creation of the colony is an equally hard operation. A well-known case is that of the Laecanii Bassi, whose involvement with large-scale amphorae production in the early Principate has rightly received considerable attention.Footnote ⁹⁵ C. Laecanius Bassus became urban praetor in ad 32 and consul in 40; his landownership in the ager of Pola is attested epigraphically (CIL V 698), and an inscription indicates that his son belonged to the Velina, the tribe of the citizens of Pola, but nothing is known about his ancestors.Footnote ⁹⁶ The trajectory that Francis Tassaux constructed, postulating an interval of four generations between the foundation of the colony and Laecanius’ acceptance into the ordo, is merely the elegant application of an ideal type.Footnote ⁹⁷ The background of Sex. Palpellius Hister (cos. ad 43) is equally elusive.

If one takes into account the extent of the centuriation in much of the peninsula of Histria, the rewards of agricultural production and the development of the region in the following generation, Caesar's choice to establish a colony at Pola seems best explained by economic considerations rather than by military ones. The relevance of the city to the control of the northeastern frontier of Italy, in fact, is far from obvious. It is worth stressing that there is hardly any evidence for the road from Pola to Tergeste, which was later refurbished and named as via Flavia, during this period.Footnote ⁹⁸ Caesar's preoccupation with the defence of the northeastern frontier is also proven only by circumstantial evidence: there is no direct attestation of a connection with Tergeste, where there is no evidence whatsoever for centuriation.Footnote ⁹⁹ There is, however, evidence for new developments further north. A road was certainly in existence between Aquileia and the Magdalensberg, where the presence of Roman traders is attested from the fifties.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The comment in Vitruvius about the emergence of trade in larchwood between the region of Castellum Larignum and the Po Valley presupposes the existence of a reliable network of road infrastructure.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The settlements of Iulium Carnicum and Forum Iulii are associated with the development of road networks to and from Aquileia, and the freedmen of families from Aquileia and Concordia are attested at Iulium Carnicum in this very period, no doubt in a commercial capacity.Footnote ¹⁰² Conversely, Nauportus appears to have gone through a phase of decline.Footnote ¹⁰³ That may be linked with the development of neighbouring Emona (modern Ljubljana), which a recent inscription from Bevke, probably dating to the Augustan period, places right on the northeastern border of Aquileia's territory.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

CONCLUSION: HISTRIA IN LATE REPUBLICAN ITALY

This set of considerations lead us to a final problem, and a useful negative conclusion. There is no evidence whatsoever that Caesar was interested in firmly defining the boundaries of Italia, or indeed that he envisaged the inclusion of Histria in Italy. Establishing whether he carried out his intervention in the Histrian peninsula as part of his activity in Cisalpine Gaul or in Illyricum is immaterial. Speaking of a master plan for northeast Italy on Caesar's part is an overinterpretation of a limited body of evidence. On the other hand, the region was not a mere afterthought to Caesar. Some aspects of his involvement do repay close attention, and suggest that there was an earnest attempt on his part to put the Roman presence on a stronger footing, notably through two fundamental areas of intervention: the foundation of the colony of Pola, which was accompanied by the creation of a comprehensive centuriation grid across Histria, and the creation of new settlements north of Aquileia, Forum Iulii and Iulium Carnicum, on the road leading up to the Magdalensberg and Noricum. Economic considerations are likely to have prevailed at Pola, while they coexisted with strategic concerns in the establishment of the settlements in the Alpine and pre-Alpine area. Rather than envisaging the fulfilment of a bold and abstract master plan, one should think of Caesar's involvement in this region in terms of a gradual accumulation and deployment of an increasingly precise local knowledge, in which different aims and concerns coexisted and interacted.

The nature and extent of Augustus’ debt to Caesar's actions in the region remain unclear, but at least one issue may be singled out. As we have seen, Histria was included in the Augustan discriptio of Italy: that decision is not explained as such in any of the literary sources. It is possible, though, that it had a direct link with Caesar's action, and for a very pragmatic reason. The question should be asked what the purpose of a discriptio was. As Michael Crawford (Reference Crawford2002: 1132–3) has suggested, the likeliest explanation is that the regiones were intended to be used for the purposes of military recruitment, and were not an Augustan creation. If that is indeed the case, the inclusion of Histria in regio X could hardly have had anything to do with the ambition to encompass a (far from obvious) natural boundary, to define a more or less abstract notion of Italia, or to reward the good people of Histria with Roman citizenship. It was arguably driven by the intention to include that territory in the area where the levy could be carried out. This was a symptom — and a recognition on Rome's part — of the prosperity and stability that the region had reached, in which the Caesarian foundation of Pola no doubt played a major role. The notion that this complex and controversial development in the concept of Italia was rooted in logistical considerations and, ultimately, in material factors is certainly worth entertaining, and appears to carry stronger explanatory power than other lines of enquiry. The discussion of the elusive and rather unambitious aims of Julius Caesar in a part of Italy of which he had modest direct experience has to come to terms with a highly fragmentary body of evidence, but may offer some insights in the long-running dynamics of the Roman conquest.