For Octavian's campaigns of 35–33 BC there are no surviving contemporary sources. Appian's Illyrike and Cassius Dio are the only reliable sources we have today. Appian drew his information directly from Augustus' memoirs, and Dio's account is generally in agreement with Appian; in some places he obviously used other, still unidentifiable, primary sources, probably Asinius Pollio or Cremutius Cordus. Marcus Agrippa, Augustus' general and collaborator, also wrote memoirs and he certainly discussed some of these campaigns, but it is difficult to believe that his account differed much from that of Augustus. For that reason it seems reasonable to rely on these sources for the reconstruction of the events, as it is unlikely that Appian and Dio taken together omit any really significant event from this campaign. Appian should certainly be treated with caution as he draws on the autobiographical work of a man who fully understood the importance and benefits of multi-media propaganda in politics, and who was a naturally gifted self-propagandist. With the help of additional sources like Florus, Strabo and Velleius Paterculus, Octavian's campaigns can be reconstructed in reasonable detail.

POLLIO AND THE DELMATAE

Roman relationships with Illyricum between 44 and 35 BC remain obscure. Publius Servilius Isauricus was possibly pro-consul in Illyricum after 41 BC, but nothing is known about his mandate, except the damaged inscription from Narona.

ILLYRICUM IN THE FIRST YEARS OF THE PRINCIPATE: THE PAX AUGUSTA

In 33 BC Octavian's campaigns were finished, and Illyricum was in a few years a de iure Roman province. In 30 BC the Roman Civil Wars ended and Octavian was finally supreme master of the Mediterranean. There is some symbolic connection between the fortunes of the first princeps and Illyricum, as military victories in Illyricum in 33 and 9 BC mark the high points of his political career, and the Bellum Batonianum of AD 6–9 coincides with the darkest hours of his foreign policy.

There is no space here to discuss in depth the great social and political changes in the Roman world that followed the victory of Octavian in the Civil Wars. The battle of Actium and the new constitution from 27 BC finished the long socio-political process of Rome's transformation. Political power had already shifted from the Senate more than two decades before, but this time, instead of two or three, there was only one unchallenged master of the empire – Augustus. However, the transformation was not yet completely finished in the first years of the Principate. The new system needed some time to consolidate, working by trial and error rather than following some pre-determined plan. Augustus implemented a series of reforms patiently and gradually during the whole of his long reign, carefully avoiding a definition of the exact extent of his non-constitutional powers, keeping the façade of constitutional and traditional government, but concentrating all power in his hands and preserving it for members of his family.

“But a German may drink beer; indeed, he should drink it as a true son of Germania, since Tacitus mentions specifically German cerevisia.” (Heinrich Heine, Über Ludwig Börne. Eine Denkschrift. 1840) / The Germania waspraised as a libellus aureus ('golden booklet') upon its rediscovery in the fifteenth century. Following centuries saw it compared to the 'dawn' of German history, a gift of a 'benign fairy' and 'a bible'. After the collapse of the National Socialist (NS) regime, however, from the vantage of hindsight, Arnaldo Momigliano gave it high priority among 'the hundred most dangerous books ever written', and added that it was 'fortunately' not his task to speak about its influence. The influence of Tacitus' Germania spans 450 years, starting with German humanists in the sixteenth century and ending with the NS downfall in 1945. Germany as a nation-state began to exist with the declaration of the German Empire in 1871. Before then, in the absence of political unity, a common past, culture and language were called upon to substantiate the German nation. But such a cultural nation has proved elusive too: the people within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nationlived mostly in their communities with their regional traditions and local dialects and quite unaware of 'Germany'. 'What is German history?' is therefore a difficult question.

The great Bellum Batonianum of AD 6–9 was one of the most significant events, if not the most significant one, in the history of the relations between Rome and Illyricum. Its significance went far beyond local, provincial history; it shaped the future conduct of the early Principate, and perhaps, combined with the aftermath of the clades Variana in the Teutoburg forest, caused a sudden end to Roman expansion in north and central Europe. This conflict brought destruction and devastation to almost every corner of Illyricum, and Italy feared the external enemy. This was the first political crisis of this kind after the end of the Republic that seriously undermined Roman confidence and Rome's position in its newly acquired territories.

These events were not a separate phase of Roman interaction with Illyricum, but we need to examine them in more detail as a direct consequence of the political framework earlier defined as Greater Illyricum, after the extension of Illyricum in the aftermath of the Bellum Pannonicum. Although the final result was Roman victory and the ultimate establishment of Roman rule, the war and its scale and ferocity were the result of the monumental failure of the previous approach. It made the Romans seriously rethink their previous arrangements and devise new ones. The most important consequence was the post-rebellion division of Illyricum into the provinces of Illyricum inferius, future Pannonia, and Illyricum superius, future Dalmatia.

“Opus adgredior opimum casibus, atrox proeliis, discors seditionibus, ipsa etiam pace saeuum” (H. 1.2.1) / “I am entering on a work rich in disasters, ferocious in its wars, ripped apart by civil strife, savage even in peace” / Tacitus frames his histories as an account of catastrophic and historic change at home and abroad. In both the Histories, the extant books of which cover the civil wars of 69, and the Annals, which recount the history of the Julio-Claudian emperors, he anatomises the consolidation of and struggle for imperial power and the consequences of Empire for Romans and the peoples they conquered. This grim history offered obvious analogies with the fraught political and social issues of Europe in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, when the uneasy peace achieved after the First World War degenerated into economic collapse, social upheaval, the rise of totalitarianism and the cataclysm of the Second World War. The conflagration of Rome, the Pisonian conspiracy and the persecution of the Christians, the paranoia and murderous struggle for power within the Julio-Claudian house, Rome's relentless push for Empire, pitting the imperial might of Rome against freedom-loving but savage natives - these Tacitean motifs provided powerful material for writers of the twentieth century. This essay examines three novelists who based their historical fiction on the works of Tacitus: Robert Graves, Naomi Mitchison and Lion Feuchtwanger.

When Pliny the Younger wrote to his friend Titinius Capito explaining his current reluctance to follow in the footsteps of his formidable uncle Pliny the Elder and write a historical work, one reason for his hesitation stands out sharply (Ep. 5.8.12): “tu tamen iam nunc cogita quae potissimum tempora aggrediamur. uetera et scripta aliis? parata inquisitio, sed onerosa collatio. intacta et noua? graues offensae, leuis gratia. / However, be considering already now what time period in particular I should tackle. Olden times which others have written about? The material is at hand, but collating it will be hard work. Recent times untouched [by others]? There is huge potential to offend, but little chance to please.” / Pliny eloquently encapsulates here the Scylla and Charybdis confronting any historian considering appropriate subject matter for his projected work. When Tacitus contemplated his first foray into the genre of history after publishing his so-called minor works, he too faced difficult choices about the chronological boundaries of his historical narrative.

In the year 17 the Cheruscan chief Arminius, revered as a founding figure by Germans of later ages and commemorated in the nineteenth century by massive monuments in the Teutoburg Forest and Minnesota, was engaged in exchanging insults with his rival, Maroboduus. This, at least, is what we are told by Tacitus, who says that Arminius called Maroboduus 'a fugitive and inexperienced in battle, one who had been protected by his lair in Hercynia . . . and was a betrayer of his fatherland and a satellite of the Roman emperor' (A. 2.45.3): “fugacem Maroboduum appellans, proeliorum expertem, Hercyniae latebris defensum, . . . proditorem patriae, satellitem Caesaris.” Although Tacitus has told us earlier that Arminius had formerly been a soldier in the Roman army and could speak Latin (2.10.3), it seems unlikely that a German warrior would be so familiar with Virgil's Georgics that he was able to describe Maroboduus in the same terms as Virgil had used to describe a skulking snake (3.544-5 'frustra defensa latebris | uipera', 'the viper vainly protected by its lair'). Of course verisimilitude is not to be expected from the speeches of barbarians portrayed in Latin historical texts: when a chief of the Britons says 'where they make a desert, they call it peace' (Agr. 30.5 'ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant'), he alludes to a speech in Book 8 of Livy, an allusion no doubt undetected by the majority of the modern politicians whose repetition of Tacitus' statement has turned it into one of the most high-profile quotations of the age.

Illyricum was born from a need to link Roman political interests in Macedonia and North Italy – later Cisalpine Gaul – and from the late Republican political backwater it became a crown jewel in imperial geo-political structure. The extension of Roman power in the region was a gradual process, which evolved through time from the late Republican interventionism, to the organised large-scale military operations conducted by Octavian and Tiberius. Insufficient evidence remains a great, almost unbeatable curse that Clio nostra casts upon Illyricum and its historians. It is the main reason why the indigenous peoples of Illyricum still remain ‘people without history’, to paraphrase the title of E. Wolf's influential book, and why Illyricum is still one of the least popular regions of ancient Europe for research for ancient historians.

The Roman political conduct in the region cannot be depicted or analysed in a single ‘objective’ narrative; it was a multifaceted, non-linear process, which existed in a number of different parallel historical narratives. The most influential narratives are certainly those present in the written sources, ‘the discourse of the dominant’, written by the members of the Roman elite and reflecting their perception of the world.

In 59 BC Caius Iulius Caesar was appointed pro-consul of Cisalpine Gaul, and in addition he received command over Illyricum by means of the lex Vatinia de imperio Caesaris. The ultimate significance of this fact for the destiny of the Republic overshadows another important thing – the de iure construction of Illyricum in Roman political and administrative discourse. This was the first time we know of that a Roman magistrate was entrusted with provincia stretching over the whole eastern Adriatic coast. Earlier instances of provinciae that Roman magistrates held in this area in the earlier period were limited to individual indigenous peoples, and the provincia of Anicius in 168 BC was related only to the regnum Illyricum. The lex Vatinia was a crucial change in Roman trans-Adriatic relations. With this law, Roman power over the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic was legally defined, and Illyricum was de iure constructed as a political concept. True, it was not yet a province with strictly defined borders, but the very fact that Illyricum was now the space where Roman political, legal and military power was directly and permanently projected signalled the last stage in Roman trans-Adriatic engagement, and at the same time can be recognised as a foundation of Illyricum in Roman political discourse.

This chapter deals with the period of Caesar's pro-consulate in Illyricum 59–50 BC, and the Civil Wars. For this period our sources are much more abundant than for the mid- to late Republican period.

“As for myself, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius were not known to me through doing me either good or harm. I would not deny that my career owed its beginnings to Vespasian, its advance to Titus and its further progress to Domitian; but those who have promised to be unbiased must describe everyone without either affection or hatred. If I live long enough, I have reserved for my old age the richer and less troublesome material of the principate of the deified Nerva and the rule of Trajan, in this rare delight of the times when you can think what you like and say what you think.” (H. 1.1.3-4) / “Soon it was our hands that led Helvidius to prison; it was we who were shamed by the looks and the sight of Mauricus and Rusticus; it was we who were drenched by Senecio's innocent blood. Nero would at least remove his own eyes from such sights, and he ordered rather than viewed his crimes; it was a special part of the suffering under Domitian to see and be seen, when our sighs were noted down, when that savage, red face with which he fortified himself against shame was sufficient to mark out the pallor of so many men.” (Agr. 45.1-2) / “There was also the death of Junia, in the sixty-fourth year after the fighting at Philippi. She was the niece of Cato, the wife of C. Cassius and the sister of M. Brutus. Her will produced much talk among the people, because she was a wealthy woman and she mentioned in complimentary terms virtually all the leading men of the state, but made no mention of the emperor. That was taken in a way appropriate to a fellow-citizen, and Tiberius did not forbid the funeral to be celebrated with the eulogy from the front of the rostra and the other customary honours. Twenty funeral-masks of the most distinguished families were carried before the bier, and the names of Manlii and Quinctii and other similar nobility were to be seen. But the most glittering of all were Cassius and Brutus, for the very reason that their likenesses were not on view.” (A. 3.76)