Henricus Dodwellus, Dissertatio de ripa Striga, ad Lactantium de Mortibus persecutorum

HENRY DODWELL'S

Dissertation

ON THE BANK OF THE STRIGA.

On Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors § 12.

§ 1. This bank was not of a Sea, but of a River. — § 2. Striga a surveyors' and military word. — § 3. Roman camps for the most part square. The front of fixed camps faced the East, of mobile camps the enemy. — § 4. Accordingly the ancients called the front of a camp the striga, the side the scamnum. — § 5. Roman colonies laid out according to Camp discipline. The outworks of the Colonies were strigae. — § 6. Rivers the boundaries of fields, of camps, and especially of the Roman provinces. — § 7. The Danube the boundary of the Illyrian outworks. The Illyrian provinces called Ripenses from the bank of that same Danube. — § 8. The same is proved from the very numerous standing camps on the bank of the Danube, and from History. What sort of fortifications the Roman outworks were. Tertullian explained against Rhenanus. — § 9. The same from the province of Attila wrested from the Romans. — § 10. The Romans sometimes went beyond the bank of the Danube, but rarely. — § 11. What prevented them from going beyond it often was the belief about the Fated boundaries of empires. Yet they retained no province beyond the Danube in the age of Diocletian. — § 12. This mention of the bank of the striga agrees with the plan and the journey of Diocletian.

§ 1. "Thus, when the summer was over, he came by a circuit of the BANK OF THE STRIGA to Nicomedia," etc. The BANK OF THE STRIGA, which Lactantius mentions in the journey of Diocletian from Ravenna towards Nicomedia, the celebrated editor of Lactantius holds suspect of corruption; or, if it truly be Lactantius's, he thinks it is to be understood of the shore of the Propontis, along which Diocletian may have travelled. In both respects the most learned man is mistaken. That the shore or coast of the sea is what one reads in the pure authors of the Roman tongue, the learned will readily grant; nor is even this difficult to grant, that perhaps rarely we may also sometimes read of the bank of the sea, yet that it is far more frequent of rivers than of the sea. It is therefore most likely that it was the bank of a river that is called the Striga, not of the sea, not of the Propontis. But this difficulty remains besides: what Lactantius understands by the name of Striga, and how it can apply to a river, and which river he meant to denote. Thus we shall have the journey of Diocletian thoroughly explored.

§ 2. Striga is therefore a land-surveyors' or gromatic word,

carried over and adopted first from the laying out of camps, then to the lands of the colonies, which were customarily measured out and distributed according to the pattern of the camp. Charisius teaches us most clearly that the word belongs to the camp. Nor indeed is there reason for anyone to think that this is peculiar to that word. The same is to be held of the whole gromatic skill, and likewise of all the terms of that art. Hyginus calls the place at the entrance of the Praetorium the place of the Groma; and the book which he wrote On the Method of Laying out Camps he also entitled Gromaticus. The same Hyginus testifies that from that camp Groma which I have mentioned the professors of that art were surnamed Gromatici. It must therefore be laid down that, compared with the camp use of this word, any other use whatever is altogether secondary.

§ 3. Therefore, although the Romans sometimes used a shape of camp other than the square, there is nevertheless no one who doubts that this was by far the most frequent of all. There is no reason for us to doubt that the soldiers were drawn up in the camp in the same order as in the battle line. And it is established that they marched in a square column whenever danger threatened from an enemy close at hand. That shape, namely, they believed to be the most suitable for fortifications. The Pythagoreans held the number four to be ἄπτωτον [not liable to fall]; and philosophers are accustomed to call a man of unconquered constancy τετράγωνον [square]. Rightly, then, shall we establish it as the norm of the gromatic art. Now the boundary-line of the square figure is twofold, one along its length, the other along its breadth. And it is certain that they called one of these the striga, the other the scamnum. The siting of camps, moreover, was twofold: one according to the circumstance and the needs of war, uncertain and movable; the other fixed and immovable, as in standing camps. In the fixed siting the Praetorian gate faced the East, in the movable one the enemy. So, namely, I understand Hyginus and Vegetius. In turning their camps towards the East they had, as I judge, regard to healthfulness. For writers on husbandry commend that aspect as the most healthful of all. But the enemy was without doubt a weightier consideration than the East. Yet in such a way that, whenever no inconvenience was feared from any other quarter, the East to the sky's other

regions they preferred. This one thing I wished to observe in this place: that among the gromatic writers the East counts for the same in a stationary position as the enemy does in a mobile one; so that whatever boundary they turned towards the East in a stationary position, that same boundary, when mobile, they would turn towards the enemy.

§ IV. Thus we shall understand what position the striga and the scamnum held in the discipline of the camp. Aggenus Urbicus calls that field "strigated" which runs lengthwise from the North to the South; but "scamnated" that which in the same way extends from West to East. Thus phalanxes drawn up lengthwise from North towards South will have had their faces turned towards the East rather than towards the North. Thus they will have faced the eagles and the Praetorian gate in the fixed form of the camp. Nor does Frontinus himself say otherwise: "But whatever," he says, "has been marked out lengthwise according to this arrangement is called 'by STRIGAE'; whatever by depth, 'by SCAMNA'." This Frontinus says of the division of lands, not indeed of the lots and portions of individual colonists, whose boundaries could be very different from one another, but of those lands which enclosed the bounds of the whole colony, or whose entire extent was assigned to the community. Accordingly there is no reason for us to doubt that land of this kind both embraces boundaries of one kind and that these conform to the laying out of a camp. Now it is agreed that, according to the discipline of laying out a camp, a battle line very long in front, so that it could not be outflanked, was usually set against the enemy. Finally there are added also those words of Hyginus: "Whenever we distribute by STRIGAE, they ought to be divided into no more than three." I consider that threefold distribution to be none other than that best known in the Roman army, of the hastati, the principes and the triarii. And that triple line was set against the enemy. Therefore the boundary which in the inscriptions of tombs is called IN FRONTEM ("in front") the Gromatici call STRIGA in the laying out of a camp; and conversely, what the Gromatici call SCAMNUM, inscriptions usually designate IN AGRUM ("into the field"). The meaning of scamnum among the writers on agriculture also agrees. For if any ground had been passed over by the plough in ploughing, they regarded it as a scamnum. The position of a field, then, that follows the furrow is "scamnated"; the position crosswise to the furrows will be called "strigated". But the position crosswise to the furrow represents the faces of soldiers standing in battle line.

§ V. Moreover, the laws that were in force in camps were likewise in force in colonies and frontier garrisons. For these were planted not only for the sake of tilling the soil, but also for the sake of defending the frontiers. This is plain enough from the very terms of land surveying. Among them that is all called territorium which was established for the sake of terrifying (terrendi) the enemy. Ager arcifinius, says Frontinus following Varro, is named from warding off (arcendis) enemies. Frontier colonies, therefore, were a kind of great camps, so that it is by no means to be wondered at if they were laid out according to the custom and discipline of camps. Certainly they employ terms proper to camps, centuriae, perticae, and countless others, so that we may understand that the colonists faced one another in the distribution of lands in the same way as soldiers in battle line. The writers on land surveying also represent colonies in the square form of camps. The very word praetentura, moreover, which Ammianus uses in the matter of frontier garrisons, makes it altogether certain that we should have no doubt at all both that the colonies keeping watch for the safety of the Republic took the place of camps, and also that in those great quasi-camps of the whole Republic they held especially that position which the strigae held in camps. For among the gromatic writers those squadrons "are encamped" (tendunt) which occupy either side of the Praetorium; those perhaps "are encamped behind" (retendunt) which are behind it; but those certainly "are encamped in front" (praetendunt) which are set against the enemy before the Praetorium and the Praetorian gate. It follows, therefore, that whatever limit they had in front, that too should be called a striga.

§ VI. Further, Siculus Flaccus counts streams among the boundaries of lands, and Frontinus rivers, to be understood chiefly of the boundaries of private colonists. Yet this was necessary for a far stronger reason in the laying out of camps and in frontier praetenturae. For a river afforded a twofold advantage to camps, both that of water,

and also that of fortification. Accordingly, skilled commanders took pains, even in hastily made camps, that a river should wash at least one boundary of the camp. But in stationary and frontier camps, whose site could also be chosen, and which were themselves founded for the sake of defence rather than of attack, it is still far more likely that the ancients observed this. For rivers are, as it were, certain natural boundaries of provinces, established by the Deity Himself, and an enemy could be overwhelmed more easily in the very crossing of the river than if one had to engage with him in an open and free field. This is certain: that the ancients were accustomed to fortify the fords of rivers, just as they did other difficult places. And the greater the river was, and the less fordable, the better fortified they believed it, and the better suited for keeping off enemies, and also, if the enemy had crossed, the easier the retreat of their own men into fortified places. There is therefore no reason for us to ransack the book-chests of the geographers concerning rivers as the boundaries of provinces. For examples occur everywhere. Not to go further afield, we have rivers as notable limits of the Roman empire, of which we are treating. The Rhine defended Gaul against the Germans and bounded it; the Euphrates [did so for] Syria against the Parthians. Why then should we not say that the Danube too was the limit of the Illyrician frontier commands, and that no other river is to be sought whose bank Lactantius called the Striga? For the Illyrician frontier commands had it set before them in front as a barrier against the enemy.

§ VII. Certainly most of the ancients acknowledged the Danube as the limit of the Roman empire. Strabo: "There being three continents, they hold almost the whole of Europe, except the part outside the ISTER, and the regions along the Ocean between the Rhine and the Tanais." King Agrippa in Josephus: "For the whole Euphrates did not suffice them towards the east, nor the ISTER among the northern [peoples]," etc. And after some words interposed: "And those dwelling on the ISTER yield to no more than two legions, with which they themselves beat back the onslaughts of the Dacians." Tacitus: "And two of the legions in Pannonia and two in Moesia held the bank of the Danube, with as many stationed in Dalmatia, which by the position of the region lay behind them." Appian: "And in Europe two rivers, the Rhine and the ISTER, chiefly bound the empire of the Romans." So too after the times of Diocletian Festus Rufus extends the boundary of the Roman empire as far as the Danube, and always designates the Danube itself as the limit of the frontier provinces. Hence we have so many provinces on that side called Ripenses, so named, that is, that they might be distinguished from other inland provinces of the same name. All recognize Ripensian Dacia, to which the Notitia of the Empire also adds Valeria and Noricum, themselves also Ripenses. And also Savia, or Second Pannonia, [called] Ripariensis, so named, unless I am mistaken, from the garrisons called Riparii. For those garrisons occupied the bank of the Danube. Under the command of the duke of Valeria Ripensis we read of Dalmatian cavalry in a place whose name was Ripa alta, beyond doubt from that bank of the Danube. Under the command of the duke of the Province of First and Second Rhaetia: the prefect of the Third Italic Legion of the upper part, assigned to the First Bank, at Submontorium. Certainly it was at that bank that Galerius kept watch under Diocletian. For thus he complains in Lactantius, that fifteen years had passed since, banished to Illyricum, or to the bank of the Danube, he had been struggling with barbarian nations, while others reigned at their ease within more spacious and quieter lands. On the same pattern Tacitus also mentions a prefect of the bank of the Rhine. The same Tacitus shows that those two legions, to which he himself, as well as King Agrippa, testifies that the guarding of those frontiers was entrusted, were stationed in Pannonia. Thus there will be no reason for us to wonder that the Pannonian soldiers especially, as being the most ancient defenders of those borders, were surnamed Riparii. Hence that Pannonia was called Ripariensis rather than Ripensis.

§ VIII. The same is shown also by the stationary camps, by far the most numerous on our bank of the Danube, of which we are treating. Certainly those camps which were established for the sake of keeping off enemies had to be near the enemies' frontiers. The Histories themselves also [show] the same. The Goths, driven out by the Huns, did not dare to cross the Danube unless permission

had previously been obtained by them from the Roman Emperor Valens. The reason, namely, why they did not dare was the frontier garrisons. Eunapius calls them "those of the Romans posted on the banks", whom Tacitus calls Prefects of the Bank. Thus, then, those garrisons occupied that bank in such a way as to leave no place for crossing unguarded. For in this way the Praetenturae were accustomed to encircle the boundaries of the Roman Empire. We learn this from the Anonymous author's little book On Military Matters. For he says thus: "There is, moreover, among the advantages of the commonwealth, a useful care of the frontiers which everywhere encircle the flank of the empire, whose protection will better be provided for by continuous forts, so that they are raised at intervals of a thousand paces with a solid wall and very strong towers. These fortifications the apportioned diligence of the landholders should establish without public expense, watches and field-patrols being kept in them, so that the quiet of the provinces, surrounded by a kind of girdle of defence, may rest secure." On this condition, therefore, the duumvirs distributed the lands of the colonies: that the boundaries of the colonies were to be both fortified and defended at the colonists' own expense. This, namely, is almost the same right of the Roman colonists as that of the Timariots among the Turks, and, among us, of military service. But this was perhaps peculiar to the Romans, that they fortified the whole boundaries of the empire with stronger defences than our people fortify their camps even when actually girded for war: namely, with a continuous and stable wall, and also with towers, or very strong forts, at each interval of a thousand paces. Fortifications of this kind we have even today in our Britain, in the walls of Hadrian, of Antoninus, and also of Severus. This too our more recent Offa imitated in that rampart which still today retains his name, forming the frontier between England and Wales. Nor would I refer to anything else those words of Tertullian: "The nation of the Moors and the barbarism of the Getulians are besieged by the Romans." The most learned Rhenanus understands this of I know not what war, which he supposes was in progress at the time when Tertullian wrote this. Yet there is deep silence about that war among the writers of that age. Nor was all that siege instituted to shut enemies in within their own borders, but rather that they might be shut out from the Roman borders, "lest", says Tertullian, "they go beyond the boundaries of their own regions"; and that for this reason the Romans fortified their empire with the garrisons of their legions. In this place, as I said, Tertullian altogether represents the form of the Praetenturae, which nevertheless would not be wholly unlike the form of siege camps. For siege camps, as I said, served a double use: not only to shut in the enemy as besieged, but also to shut out the help of enemies from outside. For in this way the Romans used to fortify the outer boundary of those camps as well, so that from that side too they might easily repel an enemy, even one otherwise equal in strength. Thus they repelled Hannibal himself at the siege of Capua, and Caesar a very numerous army of Gauls at the siege of Vercingetorix at Alesia. For they had that outer boundary too very strongly fortified with a rampart, and with towers answering one another at a fixed interval. The Praetenturae, therefore, reproduced the outer boundary of siege camps.

§ IX. Thus, while that discipline of the Praetenturae flourished, the boundaries of the Romans were unharmed, and they withstood even the fiercest barbarian enemies. Valens withdrew them and trusted the Goths, and thereafter exposed the Romans as easy prey to the barbarians. Yet traces of the old frontiers remained, even in that flood of enemies which followed. Priscus describes the province taken from the Romans by Attila thus: "its length was along the stream of the ISTER from the [land] of the Paeonians as far as Novae in Thrace, and its depth a journey of five days": so the Danube stretched along the length of the Roman province, and we have said that this limit of the length was called STRIGA. Accordingly Attila also changed the place of trade, on the same Priscus' authority: "and that the market in Illyricum should no longer be held at the bank of the river ISTER, as of old, but at Naissus, which, as having been laid waste by him, he set as the boundary of the land of the Scythians and of the Romans." Is there anyone who does not see that these places of trade were established on the very boundaries of the empire, since Naissus itself too for that reason

for this trade would Attila have designated, which had been the boundary of his new province? Who, then, would not see that, since the ancient place of trade had been the bank of the Danube, this was done for the reason that it had also been the ancient frontier of the empire? Rightly, therefore, does the Oxford Father conjecture that the memory of the RIPA STRIGA survives even today in the name of the city of Strigonium, which itself also lies on the bank of the Danube.

§ X. Although these things were so, I nevertheless acknowledge that Appian cautiously added these words: "These, then, are the boundaries on the mainland, so as to come as near as possible to exactness." For the Romans at times crossed the Rhine as well as the Euphrates, and the Danube itself as well. They held the Transdanubian province of Dacia when Appian was writing those words, it having been subdued, namely, by Trajan. Marcus added the Marcomanni and the Quadi, whom he had also occupied with garrisons. Yet Commodus withdrew those garrisons of Marcus immediately after Marcus's death. Trajan's province lasted far longer. But Aurelian too, before Diocletian, of his own accord stripped it of garrisons, the colonists being transferred elsewhere. Thus there was nothing to prevent this bank from being called, with the greatest accuracy, the Ripa striga under Diocletian. And yet the Romans were only very rarely able to pass beyond the limits of the border-defences once these were fixed. Tertullian observed this concerning his own border-defences of the Africans, in the place I have mentioned. "For they cannot," he says, "extend the strength of their realm beyond these nations." If this was true even in Africa, it was certainly so with far stronger reason on the bank of the Danube. So without doubt Aurelian judged, whom nevertheless coins and inscriptions call most victorious, and that deservedly. So great an emperor, adorned with so many spoils of the barbarians and so many triumphs, believed nonetheless that the Transdanubian lands could not even be defended. For nowhere else did the Romans withstand more frequent or stronger onslaughts of the barbarians, and that indeed with the hazard of war very uncertain.

§ XI. What of the fact that in that age there also flourished an opinion, shall I call it, or rather a superstition? Whatever it was, it certainly flourished: that, as the boundaries of estates, so also those of empires were sacred and fated, and that no one could violate them with impunity. Hence Capaneus was struck by lightning because he dared to be the first to burst into the sacred walls of Thebes; Protesilaus was slain because he dared to be the first of the enemy to leap onto the shores sacred to Neptune. He who overstepped the limits fixed for the human race was believed to be bound by a guilt requiring expiation, and to stir up a certain sacred Nemesis or Adrastia, and the jealousy of the Deity, not easily appeased. The same view was commonly received concerning the boundaries of the Roman empire. Accordingly they held that the emperor Carus, a man most brave, was struck by lightning for this reason, that he had crossed that fated boundary of the empire, namely the Euphrates. For they regarded that punishment by lightning as a most manifest sign of an offended Deity. Since this example of Carus, in another expedition against the Persians, whether that of Galerius Maximianus or perhaps rather that of Julian, made the minds of the soldiers less eager for daring, Vopiscus therefore judged that he ought to refute that opinion. This may perhaps have been the reason why good emperors did not even wish to extend the limits of the empire. We have Tacitus as our authority that the policy of keeping [the empire] within its boundaries originated with Augustus. Nor is it probable that Hadrian was of any other mind when, of his own accord and under pressure from no enemy, he abandoned, free of garrisons, the provinces already subdued by Trajan. Yet I am not unaware that the historians refer this to another cause, but they are conjecturing it from their own wit rather than on the testimony of any record of proven trustworthiness. If, then, they ever had any other limit of the Illyrian diocese than the Danube, it is nevertheless reasonable that this happened rarely. Thus the constant and fixed frontier of those parts was that which I have mentioned, the bank of the Danube. On it were the border-defences and the lasting monuments of the border-defences. On it was the rampart, and forts corresponding to one another at fixed intervals along the rampart. Even if other things were lacking, these suffice abundantly for this RIPA rightly to be called STRICA. The Danube was the lasting limit of very many frontier provinces. But that in the age of Diocletian it was the limit of all of them we have already shown.

§ XII. Moreover, this mention of the ripa striga agrees exactly with the plan and the journey of Diocletian. A disease,

now light and continual, Lactantius says he contracted: plainly a chronic one, not an acute one. But for chronic diseases, especially when they are abating, Celsus reports that being carried is most useful, for those, however, who are free of fever. Such was that [disease] of our Diocletian. And among the kinds of being carried he counts both that which was in a litter and that other which was in a ship, whether in a harbour or on a river, which he even declares to be the gentlest of all. Accordingly our emperor was carried from Rome as far as Ravenna for the most part in a litter. From there to the Danube perhaps in a litter, and the rest of the journey then in a ship, down the stream of the Danube, through the Euxine Sea as far as Nicomedia. That whole stretch for an infirm body

was indeed most wholesome; nor can we find any other route so safe and harmless, or, on a journey so long, of less weariness together with healthfulness. But since, after the manner of rivers, the Danube often bent this way and that, he is therefore said to have come to Nicomedia by the circuit of the Ripa striga. Nor indeed did this journey serve only for the care of the body; it was also an imperial one. Thus he was able to inspect the frontier garrisons, especially in those parts where danger from the enemy threatened most often. How much he feared for those parts is witnessed by the many laws issued in Illyricum, and by the Caesar set over it, the most warlike of all.